L.A. Wildfires Creating Spectacular Smoke Plume

December 7th, 2017 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.

The warm, dry Santa Ana winds which are fanning the flames of the wildfires in the L.A. area have pushed the smoke hundreds of miles offshore. Yesterday’s NASA MODIS imager on the Terra satellite captured the following image of the smoke being sheared into artistic shapes as it travels downwind. Click on the image for the full-resolution version.

NASA MODIS image of LA wildfire smoke on 6 December 2017. The red dots show locations of satellite-detected hotspots where fires are most intense.

The red dots indicate locations where the satellite sensor is detecting hotspots where the fire is most intense.

“The region has seen one of the hottest and driest starts ever to what should be the wet season.
Temperatures are about 15 degrees above normal for this time of year, according to Eric Holthaus, a meteorologist who recently reported that Los Angeles had received just 0.11 inches of rain since October 1.
While numerous factors may have played a role in the specific weather patterns seen over Southern California over the past few months, experts say that climate change has played a role more generally in making the wildfire season longer and more extreme.
The amount of land burned in the US since 1984 is double what would have been expected without the effects of climate change in that period, according to one study. And the average wildfire season in the west now lasts at least 2 1/2 months longer than it did in the early 1970s, according to WXshift, a project of the climate-change research and reporting organisation Climate Central.
In California, scientists have reported that climate change exacerbated the multiyear drought that ended with rains last winter. Those rains created an abundance of new growth that then dried out over an exceptionally hot summer. New growth tends to be brushy and flammable and it can be blown a long way, which spreads fires farther and creates new ones. All of that new vegetation plus older trees that never received enough moisture to fully recover from the drought made for a bumper crop of fire fuel.”

Ahh -yes. I think you are promoting the idea of “fake news”.
As in “fake temperature records”, “fake NOAA”, “fake NASA”, “fake Hilary”, “fake election results”, “fake moon landing”
Another symptom of old age I am afraid.

“Since 1984…” is a moment ago, in environmental terms. A hundred years of of human fire suppression have distorted the California flora enormously, both in the wild land and in the urban-interface. In some areas, like Ventura, there have not been fires in the last 60 years. The fuel loads in those not-burnt areas are ten times what would have been typical 200 years ago. (Aboriginal Americans understood the importance of regenerating the environment with fire.)

Before modern fire suppression, there was a short term equilibri
um; about as much vegetation burnt as grew, on a 5 year time scale. Now, about as much vegetation burns as grows on a 50 year time scale. Infrequent and very severe fires are the consequence.

You are just a nitwit, or you are disingenuous when you say that the fires have anything to do with ‘climate change’.

Those proposing of climate change to the root of all ills, real or imagined, is NOT unprecedented. Historically, shamans and the like have blamed mankind for the vagaries of nature and ordered human sacrifices to assuage the anger of the gods.

You guys are pathetic.
Read the article a bit more carefully. The first sentence:
“The region has seen one of the hottest and driest starts ever to what should be the wet season. Temperatures are about 15 degrees above normal for this time of year..”
Prattle on all you like about natural cycles – but you cannot deny that record warmth and dryness is a major factor.

In simple terms, considering the questioner, the Sun radiates at an effective temperature of about 5800K. So, the Sun can NOT radiatively heat another object more than 5800K. And it could not even raise Earth to 5800K, due to the inverse-square law. But, I imagine that is also over your head.

But again you are pretending you don’t know the conditions of this Gedankenexperiment. Do you understanding the meaning of the word “if?”

“In a single second, Earth absorbs 1.2210 17 joules of energy from the Sun. Distributed uniformly over the mass of the planet, the absorbed energy would raise Earth’s temperature to nearly 800000 K after a billion years, if Earth had no way of getting rid of it.”

First of all, you need to prove that black holes exist. No one has ever seen one other than Stephen Hawking in his dreams.

The only evidence for a black hole is an absence of light in certain parts of the universe. Some proof. It’s like the Big Bang proof: a 4K temperature in the universe and a Doppler shift in stellar gas spectra. It is believed by certain idiots that the 4K represents heat left over from the Big Bang.

Does no one think the massive number of stars in our universe can heat inter-stellar hydrogen and dust, which exists in vast amounts? And does anyone know where to find the centre of the universe so we know where it is expanding from?

How large is the universe anyway? And if a Big Bang explosion happened where it did, why at that location?

A black hole is theorized to occur when a star runs out of fuel and explodes. It can form a supernova, collapse into a neutron star, or collapse further into a super dense black hole. We have detected neutron stars but no one has ever seen a black hole.

I can visualize Appell furiously consulting wiki in an attempt to prove me wrong. What he doesn’t understand is that wiki articles are often written by the scientifically-challenged like himself.

1) On 11 February 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first observation of gravitational waves; because these waves were generated from a black hole merger it was the first ever direct detection of a binary black hole merger.[8] On 15 June 2016, a second detection of a gravitational wave event from colliding black holes was announced.https://tinyurl.com/zlsh3ft

2) The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is measured at 2.7K.
I believe that this is a leftover from the Big Bang.https://tinyurl.com/yctwauvn

3) Sure interstellar gas and dust can be heated by stars.

4) You might think that by backtracking the velocity vectors you can locate the center of the Big Bang (and it is at A) but this is not the case!https://tinyurl.com/6mtzyb5

I have found Wikipedia to be extremely reliable, including those areas where I have tested it in practice. Have you not found that in electronics? That was not to be expected a priori, but that’s the way it has worked out. Its real strength is in its references, it is based on evidence that you can check, and you can correct it if you have good evidence.

That can be translated as a liar. Many business feel that lying is part of business.

When Gore was VP, while Clinton was having sex in the Oval Office with female employees, and Hillary was in denial, Gore and his wife Tipper were scouring rock songs for Satanic messages. Gore did everything but try to enact legislation for climate change, the phrase not having been invented yet.

Gore worked privately with James Hansen of NASA GISS, funneling him funds to do his political muck-raking for AGW, but did nothing to get climate issues enacted. He did not appear all that interested till he discovered he could make big money spreading climate propaganda.

Gordon Robertson says:
“Or heap more misery on the poor by raising the cost of fossil fuels and energy costs to pay for their green pseudo-science.”

Gordon, you’re not poor.

Lewis isn’t poor. I’m not poor.

So why shouldn’t we all pay the true cost of fossil fuels, which includes all their negative externalities?

Stop using the poor as an excuse.

A carbon tax that is all refundable on an equal per capita basis would help solve this, and help solve poverty too — 60% of Americans would get back more than they pay, according to Hansen (I asked him for a study, but now I’ve forgotten it and can’t find my notes. It was from some economic group in Chicago that started with an “e.”

found the cost from damages due to fossil fuel use to be $120B for 2005 (in 2007 dollars), a number that does not include climate change and that the studys authors considered a substantial underestimate. For electricity generation by coal the external cost was 3.2 cents/kWh ($32/MWh), with damages due to climate change adding another 3 cents/kWh (for CO2e priced at $30/tonne). Transportation costs were a minimum of 1.2 cents/vehicle-mile, with at least another 0.5 cents/VM for climate change. Heat produced by natural gas caused damages calculated to be 11 cents/thousand cubic feet, with $2.10/Kcf in damages to the climate. They found essentially no damage costs from renewables.

This is money were all paying in medical costs (and bad health), and US governments now pay about half of all medical costs.

Also note that this EIA report found $4.2 B in direct federal subsidies for coal, oil, and natural gas in FY2010 (http://is.gd/ajcsv3).

You simply see nothing wrong with profiting from tragedy when it serves the anti-human alarmist agenda.

As I said before, we all know (including you) the anti-human alarmist would love it if there were ten times as many disasters. As it is, anti-human alarmists jump instinctively at any opportunity whatsoever to misconstrue any tragedy to serve their interests, iow, to profit from tragedy.

An Inq –
NO, NO, NO. Climate change is only responsible for ‘bad’ news.
Personally I would have thought the burning of human’s habitats would be good news for the climate changer types. But you can never tell.

DA….”You want to warm up the entire world, just to keep your toes a little warming….”

There’s nothing Lewis can do about the warming, nor can you. He acknowledges that and you are in denial.

There’s no way CO2 is causing this warming, it’s mass is negligible compared to nitrogen and oxygen. Heat in the atmosphere depends on mass and with N2/O2 at 99% mass with CO2 at 0.04%, it’s a no brainer. CO2 could never heat the atmosphere more than a few hundredths of a degree C.

Sorry, current weather conditions are normal for this time of the year. My family has been ranching in Central California since the 1840’s. The big story in about 45 days will be mudslides in the fire area from all the rain. However, that will be blamed on man-made global warming too!

Thank you Steve Kerckhoff for bringing reality into focus. I live in the UK, and have done for all of my 69 years – nothing has changed here either. Wet summers, dry summers, cold winters, mild winters, all business as usual.
A book I once read regarding the British climate written by meteorologist Robin Stirling points out how statistics can hide information. He points out that in January of 1982, the average over central England was +2.3 degrees Celsius. However, there were several nights with readings below -20 degrees.
Stirling also points out that in a really cold spell, the air will be freezing from the ground right up to the stratosphere. All this despite a few more molecules of CO2 in the atmosphere!

Has no one in California thought of fire prevention? It’s not like the areas where the fires happen are dense, inaccessible forests, the areas are more brush and dry grass.

Why are there no deep fire breaks around homes? It goes on year after year, homes burn down, and no one does anything to prevent it.

With tornadoes, and severe weather, people are at least getting notice so they can find shelter. Still, when their homes are demolished by a tornado, they rebuild using the same flimsy, wood-frame construction.

Has no one set up a fire watch in the affected California areas?

Closer to home, in Northern Alberta, the town of Fort McMurray had much of the infrastructure burned down by a wildfire. The town is surrounded by a type of muskeg, but nothing was done to prevent a fire spreading into the town.

With muskeg, fires can burn underground for years and that’s what has happened with this one. All the more reason for prevention.

Having worked in the vicinity, I find that inexcusable. There is a major river running through the extreme west side of the city, dividing it from sub-divisions in a forested area west of the city. The trees of the forest are adjacent to the homes. No one had thought to build fire breaks, no doubt because environmentalists would have had a fit.

Most of the damage came on the east side of the city, where it was even more inexcusable. Access to Fort Mac from the south comes through an eastern approach as the main highway curves west into the city. There is a sudden transition from muskeg to city. From what I could see, no attempt had been made to create a firebreak between the muskeg and the city. The fire burned home to home and building to building at least a mile westward into the city.

No one was prepared for a major fire in an area known for summer lightning storms. The Prime Minster of Canada, Justin Trudeau, turned down offers of help from 7 countries including Russia and China. Russia offered water bombers which are in short supply in Canada. Trudeau turned the offers down, like the blithering idiot he is.

Although the province of Alberta is notoriously cheap when it comes to spending on prevention, it pales with respect to California. It makes me angry each year when Californians have their homes burned down when they know the fires are coming.

Since California does not suffer the severe lightening of Alberta, it makes me wonder if the cause of their fires is not arson.

wrt California, I meant building fire breaks around the homes in the hills where the fires occur. Some people are opposed to such measures for environmental reasons or because we are ruining the habitats of spotted owls, or whatever. California is full of eco-loonies.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m supportive of sane environmental initiatives. Here in Vancouver, Canada, every time there is a wind storm, we lose power due to trees adjacent to power lines falling on them. We have such stringent environmental rules here that removing a tree can get you a life sentence.

We need to clear trees around power lines and where they endanger homes. Getting a license to remove trees around here is a major issue due to eco-loonies.

We have power lines running through trees and a kid could climb up there and get electrocuted. Nobody seems to care as long as the tree isn’t harmed.

In places in SoCal that have been through this kind of fire environment before, like the Santa Monica Mtns, west of LA, the lessons were learnt 30 and 40 years ago: Many of the houses in Topanga and Malibu are surrounded by huge, clear, fire-breaks.

Everyone else just whistled past the graveyard… in a few years this will be forgotten, too.

PS: Pictures of the WW II war production efforts in Southern California, the aircraft companies, show that there were fire breaks cut down the ridges of the mountains to the north of LA and the San Fernando Valley. As a kid, I remember watching the (cable) bulldozers (without roll-over-protection) cutting swaths of dirt down the mountains. Also, crawlers dragged ganged-disk plows around the edges of the developed areas, adjacent to the mountains, to plow down brush.

I also remember when all of that stopped, back when the word “environmentalism” gained currency…

Let me be more clear. The only reason that so many people are able to live lives of comfort and ease – like David – is because of the use of carbon based energy. Take it away and many of your comforts will disappear. You’d have to use a shovel and hoe to raise your vegetables because trucks will no longer bring them to the market. It wouldn’t be sustainable.

Whether naive DA likes it or not, the energy must essentially be fossil or (perhaps) nuclear energy. Renewable energies by themselves just can’t “replace” fossil fuels and power a civilization of 7+ billions people.

This is definitively impossible (at least by now) for simple physical reasons.

We were already on 100 % renewables 5 centuries ago.
It implies 10 to 100 times less population, slavery and no democracy.
It implies for most people growing or raising their food, a full time job of donkey work, no time left to post idiocies in various blogs nor study science or whatever.
The latter things were a privilege of a small elite of parasites.

Wind and solar electricity do not power tractors nor grow or transport the food.

lewis…”…lives of comfort and ease like David is because of the use of carbon based energy. Take it away and many of your comforts will disappear”.

In a much bigger way than most people realize. John Christy of UAH has witnessed this first hand while teaching In Africa. He understands the implication of unafforable or unavailable energy. John points out that we are living longer because of fossil fuel energy.

That’s the entire point. If only we could get eco-alarmists to understand that.

I am sympathetic to the environmental cause in many ways but not to the extent of forcing humans to freeze in the dark, a phrase coined up here in Canada to describe life without fossil fuels. And certainly not to the extent of forcing the poor into deeper misery because they cannot afford fuel, for transport or heating one’s home.

Here is BC, like David Appell in the Pacfic Northwest of the US, we have abundant sources of ultra clean electrical power. However, they are driving up the price of electrical power even though it is generated by a public electrical utility. I can’t help wondering if the reason behind that thinking is eco-alarm.

We in Canada have a treaty with the US called the Columbia River treaty. In the link below is a reference to W. A. C. Bennett (we called him Wacky) who deserves credit for much of the current infrastructure of hydroelectric dams in BC.

Bennett was an enigma in that he was an uber right winger yet he believed in publicly owned power utilities. He nationalized BC Electric and turned it into the publicly owned BC Hydro. As a result, we’ve had very affordable power for decades, till recently.

Subsequent BC right-wing governments have tried to privatize Hydro with limited success, however, the most recent of them implemented a carbon tax. With the implementation of the tax, the cost of electricity has gone up as well to the point where people have to be careful about the cost of heating their homes.

We now have a coalition government with a majority left-wing party and the minority Green party. The Greens are run by Andrew Weaver, an uber climate alarmist and climate modeler. With the balance of power, he can force concessions and I fear he will try pushing up the cost of fuel.

Our left-wingers, the NDP have a counterpart NDP government in the next province over, Alberta. Alberta’s economy is oil based and now the two governments are at loggerheads over pipelines. This should enlighten people who think the AGW fiasco is about left-wingers. Here we have two left wing governments, one defending AGW and the other promoting fossil fuels.

Gordon Robertson says:
DAI buy 100% clean electricity from my power company
“You live in the Pacific Northwest where hydro power is readily available. Thats not true for many locations throughout the world who rely on power plants driven by fossil fuels.”

Once the true cost is there, markets and technology will find solutions.

One may hope so in future, but the fact is that there is by now no serious technical solution to the energy storage problem that necessarily goes hand in hand with intermittent wind and solar. Nor is there any viable solution to the problem of transport and agriculture that for trucks, airplane, tractors need carbon based and thus synthetic fuels if they have to be carbon and climate neutral.

gamma: Jacobson is, in fact, sueing the authors of that paper, claiming they deliberately lied about his work.

BTW, are you aware that you can disagree with someone without denigrating them? Calling Jacobson — who I saw give an impressive talk, right or wrong — a “simpleton” just makes you look deranged and, therefore, worth ignoring.

I do not miss (nor dismiss) you point…
And you just provide grist to the mills of mine:

It would be a good start to at least stop building new coal power plants.

This is unfortunately precisely what won’t happen if some “scientists” delude and tell people and politics lies and utter idiocies, namely that it is technically>/i> possible to power a civilization of 7+ billion people with 100 % wind, solar and hydro by 2040-50.
See the German example where CO2 emissions even increased.
I doubt that if even rich Germany rather fails in this respect, countries such as India or China will succeed.

DA

The fact that Jacobson sues scientists who disagree with his thesis is just one among the many reasons why I feel free to call him a simpleton and even an idiot. That’s not the way to deal with controversy in science. Just a ridiculous practice of green activists not scientists.
By the way in present instance the liar is clearly Jacobson himself.

Thats becauses fossil fuel producers and users are socializing the costs of their pollution.

No that’s just one more laughable excuse and a lie. Even if “true” cost could be and were indeed taken into account you cannot expect implementation of an alternative solution that does not even yet exit, technically !

Once more, let’s repeat it over and over again:

We don’t know how to store renewable energy at appropriate scale yet. We don’t know how to produce synthetic fuels from renewable wind and solar for transport and agriculture at apprppriate scale yet.

I do not miss (nor dismiss) you point
And you just provide grist to the mills of mine:

It would be a good start to at least stop building new coal power plants.

This is unfortunately precisely what wont happen if some scientists delude and tell people and politics lies and utter idiocies, namely that it is technically>/i> possible to power a civilization of 7+ billion people with 100 % wind, solar and hydro by 2040-50.
See the German example where CO2 emissions even increased with “Energiewende”.
I doubt that if even rich Germany rather fails in this respect, countries such as India or China will succeed.

DA

The fact that Jacobson sues scientists who disagree with his thesis is just one among the many reasons why I feel free to call him a simpleton and even an idiot. Thats not the way to deal with controversy in science. Just a ridiculous practice of green activists not scientists.
By the way in present instance the liar is clearly Jacobson himself.

Thats because fossil fuel producers and users are socializing the costs of their pollution.

No thats just one more laughable excuse and a lie. Even if true cost could be and were indeed taken into account you cannot expect implementation of an alternative solution that does not even yet exit, technically !

Once more, lets repeat it over and over again:

We dont know how to store renewable energy at appropriate scale yet.
We dont know how to produce synthetic fuels from renewable wind and solar for transport and agriculture at apprppriate scale yet.

There are fire breaks all over the mountains and hills of Southern California. You don’t seem well versed in Santa Ana wind driven fires here. I’ve lived in So Cal for nearly all of my life (57 years) and was a first responder for 32 years (ret.) The Thomas Fire in Ventura county started during the evening, when the temperatures were pretty cool, but with the lack of humidity and 50-60 MPH winds, there is virtually nothing a fire break or brush clearance can do for you. The FD and everyone is at the complete mercy of the winds. I was listening to the scanner and watching the live feed stream on the internet from the news chopper the night this fire broke out on Dec 4th. The fire was jumping a half mile ahead of itself in numerous locations with the spread of embers which quickly grew into large spot fires. The FD can only try and save a few houses, the rest will burn. Everything in it’s path, once it gets into a neighborhood, is in jeopardy. This scenario has repeated itself countless times during the last 50 plus years, and with the growing population here, it’s likely never to change. Fires are rarely caused by lightning in So Cal, and never during a Santa Ana, because there are no clouds or weather. Most of the time is downed or arching power lines. Others causes included car fires on the road next to brush, illegal fires (homeless camps, careless people) or arsonists. Another thing about Santa Ana winds is that they are usually very localized, and always in the same locations due to the local topography. You can be in downtown LA and there is no wind at all, drive 20 minutes north into the San Fernando Valley and its gusting at 50 MPH. It’s been dry this year, last year we had above average rainfall (22 inches at my house). We get the same old stories every year about fire season, but the truth is So Cal is naturally an arid climate, with very step terrain, and this will always be an issue.

brian s…”brian s…thanks for info Brian. I was aware of the Santa Anas but not in relation to California fires.

Sorry if I talked out of turn without understanding the extent of the problems you face down there. I can’t help thinking that the US, with it’s penchant for inventiveness, could not find a solution. Seems to me, and that applies here in Canada, we don’t seem interested in disaster till after it strikes.

I live near a major airport and the approach to the runways is over dense housing estates for mile after mile. We know that one day there will be a major disaster if an airliner crashes on approach or take off. Everyone knows it but no one cares enough to investigate.

Even smaller sea planes approaching come over my house at a few hundred feet. I think they are far too low and I have complained about the obvious hazard should one have an engine failure.

The natural cycles went out the door with the introduction of European grasses hundreds of years ago. It is now a completely different fuel complex. Fuel conditions aside, the problem is very dry high winds. The canyons become blast furnaces, even with low fuel loads.

DA…”How is a link on the temperature in the south of US relevant to the topic of this blog post?”

In case you’ve missed it, all of Roy’s blog post comments meld into a discussion of general physics related to climate science as they progress.

Although I don’t agree with the science of alarmists I am learning a lot by challenging myself to dig deeper for a better understanding of physics in general.

ren’s posts are about meteorology in general and they seem fitting on a blog run by a scientist with a degree in meteorology. It’s obvious as well that ren is skeptical that anthropogenic forces are leading to catastrophic climate change. That seems to fit with Roy’s philosophy and is backed by the data he presents from UAH.

Park Williams‏ @peedublya
“Soil moisture estimates suggest the So CA areas that are burning are drier than 98-95% of Decembers since 1895. The La Nia-like drift toward drying across the southern US, including So CA, has persisted for 2 months.”

“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds”.

“The most recent time that Houston, Texas, received measurable snow was Dec. 4, 2009, which was also the earliest seasonal snowfall on record in the city, according to NWS Houston.”
What was the solar activity in 2009?http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/webform/monitor.gif

“This is an unusual event – to see snow falling this early in the season all the way from Texas and the Gulf Coast region to Georgia,” said Laura Pagano, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Atlanta/Peachtree City office. “It has happened before, but not often.”

Towards the end of October surface winds started moving north in the Pacific as can be seen in the above link. This surface flow has been the dominant pattern ever since then. The base of the surface winds starts around 30N latitude. and then moves north to impact Canada and Alaska. Alaska, for example, had minus temps across much of the state until this warm surface wind worked its way north, which warmed temps by around 30 degrees F.

gm…”Towards the end of October surface winds started moving north in the Pacific as can be seen in the above link”.

gbaikie has expounded at length on the obvious fact that the oceans have created the warming on this planet. I am aware that we in Vancouver have been blessed with warm currents and winds off the Pacific that keep our climate mild.

Were it not for the oceans, freezing winds from the north would descend upon as and leave us miserable.

DA…”How has the ocean created warming. It itself is warming. Where is all this heat coming from?”

It may be warming on a warming/cooling cycle but I don’t think the process is related to anthropogenic forces.

The heat is coming from solar energy obviously and the massive number of atoms/molecules in the ocean are able to retain it for a while, long enough to heat the atmosphere.

Stephen Wilde has likened it to a hot water bottle and I think that model is apt. Difference is, in the vastness of the oceans there are continuous currents running and they are affected by oscillations like the AMO, PDO, ENSO, etc. Since the atmosphere is in direct contact, it is affected, therefore the entire ocean-atmosphere interface is one gigantic cauldron of warming/cooling forces.

Furthermore, I think that daily system has a long term oscillation. I think the 98 EN may have set off an oscillation in the ocean-atmosphere system that still hasn’t settled down. On top of that, as Aksofu has claimed, we could still be re-warming from the Little Ice Age.

It is likely that most 12 year old girls or boys know more about real physics than the pretender phony g*e*r*a*n who knows how to peddle made up physics from his hero Joe Postma but does not seem to be able to comprehend valid established physics at any level. If it is not made up he can’t understand what you are saying.

I would think if you wanted to have an actual conversation with g*e*r*a*n all you would need to do is throw away the textbooks and make up your own physics and he would be fine with that. I guess some people need to reject reality in favor of their fantasy world.

norman…”…but does not seem to be able to comprehend valid established physics at any level”.

I have studied science at university in engineering and applied a good deal of what I learned for decades in the electronics, electrical, and computer fields. You tell me the same thing. Could it be that you are the one living in a fantasy world of pseudo-science?

I don’t have a problem with g*r’s understanding of science.

You list Joe Postma and Claes Johnson among your targets, labeling them as pseudo-scientists, while Postma has a masters degree in astrophysics and Johnson has a Ph.D in mathematics. It seems to me your criterion for rating people, such as Postma, Johnson, g*r, and myself is whether or not we agree with your interpretation of physics.

You are very incorrect. I do not judge anyone based upon my interpretation of physics. Physics is established science and not subject to one person’s interpretation of what is being said. There are multiple math equations.

You just make up physics. I link you to real physics you can read but you do not seem willing to do so. You read your fellow crackpots that make up this delusional physics that has no experimentation, goes against decades of established science and you think I am the one with issues?

I use straight textbook physics. I link to it so you can read it. If you believe my interpretation of the subject is not correct than prove it.

You are one of the goofy thinkers who need to post their crap on a daily basis. You are constantly proven wrong and you constantly keep repeating it. You are proud of your stupid ideas that have no basis in any real world physics. You made them up and seem to think you know something.

One recent case, you can’t understand what the
q = ε σ (Th4 – Tc4) Ac Tc^4 stands for. You know it is the temperature of the surroundings but you are clueless of what it means. It is the incident energy the hot surface is RECEIVING from the surroundings. It is temperature based because the amount of radiant energy emitted by the surroundings is dependent upon temperature. You really don’t know much and maybe a long long time ago you knew something about electricity and electronics, those days are gone and now you just are content to make up your own ideas and feel that you are this genius that has it all figured out. Screw the world of established science based upon empirical testing, you know better than the entire lot of them and your two buddies (Johnson and Postma that also have it all figured out with their made up physics).

DA…”Gordon, if you had understood any of the science you took, youd easily see that Postma and Johnson are cranks of the first order. Even higher than you”.

I’ll happily live with such good company since both attempt to rigorously attack problems in physics rather than sitting back with ad homs.

Johnson is light years ahead of me in math but the math I did take at the uni has helped me to follow his reasoning. Seems sound to me.

The only way we can understand EM is to treat it as a series of harmonic oscillators. That’s the basis of QM theory, with probability theory thrown in. Johnson has done a wonderful job presenting his theories based on that.

I read my first article by Postma the other night and I have no issues with what he is trying to say. I think he should learn to cut back the detail and hone his understanding of certain facets but overall I think he provides a good message based on physics.

I can’t stand reading Gavin Schmidt because he throws in presumptions without explanation, like CO2 having a warming effect of 9% to 25%. I also saw him stumble trying to explain positive feedback. He offered a formula that did not work and which was challenged by engineer Jeffrey Glassman.

I don’t think Schmidt understands that EM is not heat. I don’t even think Pierrehumbert gets that.

norman…”You just make up physics. I link you to real physics you can read but you do not seem willing to do so”.

I know you try but you don’t even understand the message at the links you supply. You obviously think you understand but you’re not getting it.

You know, I first learned electrons before studying it formally in electrical engineering. I thought I understood how transistors worked (BJT’s) but I was way off. I could repair circuits with BJT’s in them but certain problems escaped me because I was used to tracing circuits using voltages and became perplexed at times when transistor circuits produced results I could not fathom.

I did not know about saturation or the effects produced on transistor circuits by high frequencies. In a high frequency transistor oscillator, the base voltages can take on ridiculous values and if you don’t know why you cannot understand. When I finally studied it formally, the light went on.

Also, transistor are composites of positively and negatively charged bits of silicon. Silicon by itself will conduct electrical current like a resistor, but once the silicon is doped with certain elements (donor and accep.tor elements) to produce an excess or lack of electrons, joining them produces a device in which electrical currents cannot run through them as expected.

Once you see how that works, you can’t help but smile.

I have no interest in flaming you or saying anything to discourage you. I hope you persist with your interest in physics no matter what I say to you or anyone else.

I can’t prove to you that I’m right and you’re wrong, nor do I have the interest. If you believe I am wrong then you have to go with that as long as belief is important to you. In science, there is no room for belief, however, because reality does not care what you believe.

You are wasting your time taking shots at me. Prove your assertions to yourself without doubt. Sometimes that can take years, even decades. When I was in my 20s I lacked the confidence I have accumulated, almost by osmosis. Can’t explain it, if you work with theories long enough eventually the brain appears to work them out.

When I first started in electronics it was all Greek. Whatever I had learned in the classroom did not transfer well to real, physical circuits. Someone described it as wearing two hats. You were the theory hat to analyze the circuit drawing (schematic), take it off, and put on your circuit troubleshooting hat. Eventually, the two come together.

You have made claims about electrons which are wrong, either that, or the profs that taught me EE are wrong. When you challenge me on electrons and their capabilities you are challenging someone who had to learn that theory in order to apply it in the field for decades. If I learned it wrong, how was I able to survive in the field?

Simply put, electrons and protons are the basic elements in atoms and molecules. There is nothing else in an atom or molecule that can explain electric current or heat. I quoted that directly from a link supplied by Svante and you continued to deny it.

You cannot always go on textbooks. You supplied a reference written by a mechanical engineer and I felt some of what he was presenting was wrong. Therefore, if it is wrong, and you have accepted it as being right, you’re in trouble.

Read widely. For thermodynamics, read Clausius from the beginning, where he teaches the theory of work. You’ll get invaluable training in the fundamentals of physics. Fortunately, I had studied a lot of physics by the time I read him. making it a real treat to read the master on thermodynamics.

Clausius takes you right through his development of the mechanical theory of heat, the mechanical being a reference to work and the movement in atoms (vibration). He shows you how he developed the first law and the second law as well as entropy. He shows you his development of U and internal energy.

Your ignorance is without bounds, yet, like all arrogant crackpots, you think you know better than all those who devote (and have devoted) their entire lives to understanding and creating this science.

DA…”No one talks about climate as a force. They talk about forcings on climate. Jeez”.

A forcing comes from differential equation theory, that’s where I first encountered the term, long before it became en vogue due to climate modelers applying it to the atmosphere.

As you know, in DE theory, a forcing function is applied to a DE to force a response. The forcing function may be a unit impulse function, essentially a square wave. In electrical engineering we applied such a function to the DE of an electrical circuit because the sharp rising edge provokes a ringing in the circuit and causes it to have poles, which are spikes in the frequency response.

I have read articles in which those involved in climate, or those providing articles on it, have suggested the climate has an effect on this or that, suggesting it is a force of some kind.

GR wrote:
“I have read articles in which those involved in climate, or those providing articles on it, have suggested the climate has an effect on this or that, suggesting it is a force of some kind.”

You clearly didn’t understand what you read, and you’re still getting it all backwards.

Forcing does come from a (pair of partial) differential equations, known as the Schwarzschild equations or the two-stream equations. They express the radiation in the atmosphere, in the up and down directions, as a result of (a) energy flux, and (b) how the atmosphere itself radiates, due to it constitute gases. This latter term gives the “radiative forcings.”

Climate models integrate these equations, given the convection taking place and given the radiative properties of the gases.

@ ren… I heard talk of those high temps. So I looked up historical records for the area. It was interesting to note that over half of the record high temps for the area occurred prior to 1980. The point being that this warm spell is not out of the ordinary for the area or the season. …http://www.intellicast.com/Local/History.aspx?location=USCA0638

In fact 23 of the high temp records for Los Angeles occurred prior to 1980. Also of note is the fact that 10 of the high temp records for December occurred prior to 1920. That is amazing. Note that the record high temp for Dec 11th was back in 1895. WOW!

@ ren…strange, there are two different pages at Intellicast for the Los Angeles area, and they show 2 different sets of numbers. They both have the same page name. I have no idea how that can be. I saved a screenshot from the Intellicast page that shows high temps from the early 1900s and late 1800s, but the link above no longer shows that page.

I have been expecting since last winter that this winter will bring a deep freeze into Europe. So far Europe has been lucky as surface wind flows have stalled the advance of the cold wave that centers in Siberia every winter. Last winter the cold wave, -10 F or colder, stopped in Eastern Poland.

The satellite photo shows smoke originating not in the Santa Monica Mountains above L.A., but in the Transverse Ranges of Ventura County. That so-called “Thomas” fire is the biggie among several fires burning in Southern California.

Good to see some honesty here, but then you go off on a ridiculous tangent in the 2nd half of your thoughts. ILLEGAL immigration by the millions. That is why there are more people living in the rough these days.

Hypothetical, 1 million people emigrants into a state in one year. What is the likelihood that there would be enough vacant housing sitting around for such a large influx of people? So for the state of California which has around 2.5 million illegal aliens, what effect would that number have on housing in California?

CO2 does not block heat because there is no heat for it to block. There is only electromagnetic radiation. Don’t get caught up in that pseudo-science about EM being thermal radiation, there is nothing thermal in EM.

Thermal refers only to the source being a heat source. However, all EM comes from heat sources. The electrons producing the EM also help to produce heat in the body, by themselves and in through vibration in conjunction with protons.

The word thermal specifically refers to EM transmitted in the infrared EM band. Those same electrons can transmit light if they are highly agitated. I can tell you from decades in the electronics and electrical fields to stay away from agitated electrons. They can be ornery. They can burn you when they overheat devices and they can burn holes through your skin.

CO2 slows down nothing. The only thing that can affect the rate of radiation from the surface is the temperature of the atmosphere immediately in contact with the surface.

That surface atmosphere is 99% nitrogen/oxygen and they produce the temperature at the surface. CO2 is entirely insignificant as a warming agent.

Don’t take my input as gospel. Physicist/meteorologist Craig Bohren, in his book Atmospheric Radiation, claimed that the notion of GHGs acting as a blanket or heat trapping device is a metaphor at best, and at worst, plain silly.

Heat cannot exist without atoms, it is the kinetic energy of atoms in motion. EM has no atoms, how can it transport heat?

EM comes into heat transfer only as the messenger, akin to magnetic flux in an electrical transformer. Heat is converted to EM in a hotter body, causing the hotter body to cool, and the EM can be intercepted by cooler atoms in a cooler body where it is converted back to heat, warming the cooler body. That process is not reversible, that is, it cannot happen in the opposite direction.

Heat transfer from a hotter surface to a cooler atmosphere (GHGs) means only that the surface cools through emission of EM and the GHGs warm. There is no heat exchanged physically, the heat exists only in the surface and in the GHGs. If no heat is leaving the surface, how can it be blocked? Or slowed down?

Blocks: Then how does any EM leave the earth? Even if it blocks, at some point the GHG’s have to re-radiate, which will be in every direction, and the process begins anew. Finally, it all reaches the upper atmosphere and dissipates into space as EM.
No, it only slows down. The question then becomes only: how much does it slow the process down? Cloud cover on a still night, does an excellent job. A clear night, clear, it gets cold in a hurry. In a low humidity area, deserts etc, even faster.

Some radiation simply does not escape, permanently. It’s what creates the greenhouse effect, which is very obvious in the graph I linked to.

AGW is on top of the greenhouse effect, so even less radiation gets to leave. The Earth responds to this energy imbalance by warming up, thus it emits more radiation in an attempt to achieve TOA balance.

The TOA imbalance is now about 0.7 W/m2, according to a paper last year by Greg Johnson of NOAA et al.

I ran this one past Norman. I know it’s ridiculous to talk on a one to one photon exchange but consider that each atom in the surface is emitting one photon at one instant of time. And consider that one CO2 molecule is absorbing each one of those photons.

How many emitting atoms/molecules are there in the Earth’s surface/oceans emitting photons and how many CO2 atoms are there in the atmosphere to absorb those surface photons?

I claim the sheer volume of surface atoms/molecules emitting photons would make the number absorbed by CO2 molecules insignificant.

It comes down to mass, even though Svante disagrees. In a constant volume, constant mass system like our atmosphere, temperature is proportional to gas pressure. Gas pressure is proportional to mass, and according to Dalton, the total pressure is the sum of the partial gas pressures. That means the total mass is the sum of the partial masses, and the total temperature is the sum of the heat produced by each mass.

At 0.04%, CO2 should contribute an insignificant amount of heat, even if it is absorbing a significant amount of surface radiation which I don’t think it is.

GR wrote:
“In a constant volume, constant mass system like our atmosphere, temperature is proportional to gas pressure. Gas pressure is proportional to mass, and according to Dalton, the total pressure is the sum of the partial gas pressures. That means the total mass is the sum of the partial masses, and the total temperature is the sum of the heat produced by each mass.”

Why are you ignoring radiation? The Earth’s surface radiations huge amounts of it — where is it going?

DA…”If you dont believe the Big Bang, where did the 3 K cosmic microwave background come from? It permeates space”.

I already offered my two bits worth. There are an incredible number of stars burning at millions of degree C. There is plenty of free hydrogen and dust floating around the interstellar spaces. Why could the stars not heat the hydrogen and dust to a measly 4K?

svante…”If you dont believe in the Big Bang, what are your thoughts on the origin of the universe?”

Three little words: I don’t know (actually four). And neither does anyone else.

As far as the origins of life are concerned, does it make sense to you that 5 basic elements in primeval muds fluked together to form structures as complex as the mysterious structures in the human eye? How about the mammoth system of human cells where each organ has different cells that combine to operate with a wonderful intelligence?

There is absolutely nothing in bonding theory to explain how molecules formed from 5 basic elements could or should produce life. As biologist Rupert Sheldrake put it, it’s like dumping building materials at a site and expecting them to form a building by themselves.

There are a lot of questions that are totally beyond the human mind and offering stupid theories like evolution, the Big Bang and black holes is a testament only to human ego, arrogance, and stupidity.

What’s wrong with I don’t know. The phrase applies equally to AGW. Why offer up an inane theory like anthropogenic CO2 based on the wonderment of ‘what else could it be’?

Did you catch that offering from Postma? We build greenhouses to do what the atmosphere cannot do?

Svante wrote:
“You are missing out on many great discoveries by calling everyone an idiot.”

This is a great point.

Science is a beautiful subject. It has uncovered more truths than any other discipline. Its findings, from physics to chemistry to biology, are fascinating. The fact that we can understand so much in such detail is truly amazing. The discoveries of science, about the world here and about the universe, are incredible, wonderful, and endlessly fascinating. Without it we’d still be in the middle ages.

In my opinion the mechanism of evolution by natural selection is the most beautiful idea that a human has ever come up with. It just fits so well into what’s observed, it explains plants and animals so simply and so elegantly, it’s really beyond words.

I cannot understand why anyone would scoff at all this, call scientists “idiots,” disregard their work and even call it false. I don’t understand what drives someone to do this.

Like Svante put so simply, scoffers and deniers and cranks and crackpots are missing out on so much. Don’t deprive yourself of ideas. If you think they’re wrong, study the subject so you can make rational, mature arguments, but don’t turn your mind off at the front door. There is so very much inside.

DA…”In my opinion the mechanism of evolution by natural selection is the most beautiful idea that a human has ever come up with. It just fits so well into whats observed, it explains plants and animals so simply and so elegantly, its really beyond words”.

Genetics explains that but for one species at a time. Natural selection is a sci fi explanation that makes little sense at all. There is no physical evidence to support the transformation of one species to another. No fossil has ever been found that shows a transition from one species to another taking place.

Natural selection cannot explain how life came from the chemical bonding of 5 basic elements therefore it can’t lay claim to mutations in that complex process. It can only speculate, just as AGW theory speculates.

Where natural selection really falls down is in the area of chemical bonding theory. Bonding does not explain ‘life’ or how it came about. How does natural selection explain the basic sense we have of being alive? Calculations have been done as to the probability of 5 atoms bonding together by chance to produce present day life and the probability is infinitely against such an occurrence.

It’s a generalized theory that covers minute, extremely complex processes by washing over them and ignoring them.

Nothing beautiful about it unless you call the delusions of the human mind beautiful.

svante…”Gordon, I dont know how life or the big bang started, but the boundaries have been pushed very close to the beginnings.

The big bang is consistent with observations and theoretical physics. Evolution is consistent with observations and chemistry”.

The boundaries may have been moved closer through delusions in the human mind but not in the reality of the universe. You need to distinguish human illusions from the hard reality.

I laid out the reality of the universe vis a vis the BB. The BB is based on a 4K average temperature in the universe and Doppler motion indicated in the spectrum of stars.

That’s it!!! No other evidence whatsoever. From that scant information, the deluded human mind has created sci fi about the BB that has never been witnessed in reality.

Astronomer Wal Thornhill, in reference to space-time curvature pointed out that it does no apply to any dimension of which we are aware. There is no physical reality to demonstrate it, except the delusional reality in the human mind.

svante…”You say these questions are totally beyond the human mind, but this idiot says the opposite, from Ontario no less”.

I don’t care how much status this guy has in the scientific community he deserves to be called an idiot.

Within the first few minutes of his lecture he has claimed light from distant stars helps us see back in time. Then he provides a model with the Earth-Sun system at its centre, surrounded by a dense concentric rim of stars, surrounded again by what he calls primordial plasma, presumably from the Big Bang.

Svante…if you want to believe this sci fi, be my guest. If you want to divorce yourself from it by sitting back, relaxing, saying ‘I don’t know’, and allowing your natural awareness and intelligence to intervene, it will point out the gaping holes in the theory this intellectual twit is spoon-feeding the idiots in the audience.

For one, there is no such thing as time. If you freeze the universe at any one instant, everything, light, stars, gravity, etc. is in the here and now. Reality is always here and now and unless you get that and delude yourself with light traveling through a continuum of time, you will be fooled just as this educated fool has fooled himself.

You can almost see it in him, the way he told an inane joke then laughed inappropriately for a lengthy period at his own mirth. Then stood there with a ridiculous look on his face, not quite aware of his faux pas.

You did not ever see that with Feynman or Linus Pauling. They were always completely aware. This guy has been spoon-fed crap and now he is passing it on to others. Recently I saw one of his ilk trying to spoon-feed the Great Unwashed that gravity is not a force but an effect of the space-time continuum.

Come on man, don’t get sucked in by delusional mental processes, kick your awareness into gear. It was a free gift at birth.

“In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to the structure of the universe as a whole.[172] He discovered that the general field equations predicted a universe that was dynamic, either contracting or expanding.”

Seems obvious at this point that aCO2 is causing Arctic sea ice extent to increase through anthropogenic fed vegetation cementing dust that would otherwise erode becoming airborn and alight on Arctic ice and glaciers changing their albedo, triggering melting. In fact, I bet the little ice age glaciation had something to do with the co2 following the warming of the MWP Roman etc.

darwin…”Seems obvious at this point that aCO2 is causing Arctic sea ice extent to increase through anthropogenic fed vegetation cementing dust that would otherwise erode…”

Hogwash!!

All CO2, by mass, could not warm the atmosphere more than a few hundredths of a degree C and ACO2 is a small fraction of all CO2, as claimed by the IPCC based on 390 ppmv. It’s around 4% of all CO2 based on 390 ppmv.

If all the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere has a limitation of a few 100ths of a degree C (Ideal Gas Equation and Dalton’s Law), ACO2 has only 4% of that warming capability. Modelers who claim a 9% to 25% warming effect are seriously out of touch with physics, thermodynamics, and chemistry.

ren…It appears to me as if surface winds over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans are stronger and wider spread this year as compared to past years. I have not been watching long enough though to conclude if that is the case. What do you think? I know that you have been at this a lot longer then I have.

DA…”Here are the trends, in Kkm2/yr, for each month from Jan-Dec since 1979, according to N.S.I.D.C.s monthly Arctic sea ice extent:”

That’s interesting, from people who were not on the ice measuring it. Do you realize that ice is driven by winds and ocean currents and that it smashes into itself all over the Arctic producing small mountains called pressure ridges. Some are 40 feet high.

I have read of three major expeditions from the Canadian north shore to the North Pole. Each expedition complained about pressure ridge after pressure ridge, stacked parallel near shore and thinning out as the Pole was approached. A hundred miles of the trip, at least is one pressure ridge after the other.

Did your study take into account the surface area loss represented by these vertical mountains formed from horizontal ice?

A lot of the ice flows in circles around the Arctic Ocean, caused by the Beaufort Gyre. Some of it is carried into the North Atlantic by the Transpolar Drift where it melts. There’s no telling how much of the ice surface area is lost to the Atlantic or due to compression along shorelines.

Satellites take snapshot views and they cannot reveal or explain what is driving the ice. They cannot see in the dark. Sats cannot tell you if the Beaufort Gyre and the Transpolar drift are compressing the ice or dumping it into the Atlantic.

I doubt if they can measure ice thickness to any degree of accuracy. There is a Russian camp near the North Pole where they measure all that stuff. No one else seems to have the guts to live in such an environment.

Most of them are short term and cyclic.
CO2 is long term and we keep adding more.
CO2 is easily overwhelmed in the short term, but keeps adding in the background. It will put you back on the trend line once your pause is over.

The problem I have with that statistic is that it does not look at temperature records that are complete to the 1900’s. Since many max temperature records occurring today are for stations only in existence 50 years (started during a cold period) it distorts the results. If you look at Table 6.2 and Figures 6.3 and 6.4, you will see that extreme temperatures are down.

Has there been a study that just looks at stations that were in existence for a full 100 years and not tainted by the heat island affect? I remember Dr. Spencer doing something related to average, not sure if you also looked at the temperature maximums.

I should have clarified, this should be the recorded max temperature and not adjusted, normalized, sanitized, butchered or distorted. 🙂

I mentioned awhile ago on this site how Alice Springs, Australia seemed wrong in GISS. The old temperature station located at the post office was about 0.5C warmer than the newer site in the years there was overlap. The solution appears to be to lower the average temperature for the post office site about 2.8C in 1880 and reduce the adjustment over the next 100 years. This gives an appearance of a warmer trend as is very deceptive.

The record temperature for Alice Springs is now listed as happening recently, even though the post office site had a significantly higher max temperature in the first part of last century.

I think it’s clear there has been a greening of the world from ACO2, and no significant warming beyond natural climate variability. That all this new vegetation holds down dust that would otherwise become airborne alighting on ice changing its albedo causing it to melt is not a new idea. We’re causing an ice age by our CO2! David A. you must know this?

From upstream: David Wrote: “Yes. Because clouds block some of the infrared radiation the Earth is emitting, so more infrared radiation is radiated down to the surface, warming it.
On a cloudless night, the IR isnt blocked (by clouds).”

Not blocked, reflected.
It is also reflected in every direction, not just down. Even clouds will not ‘block’ the IR from leaving the planet, only slow it down.

That’s not the only inaccuracy. The notion that heat can be transferred from clouds at a colder temperature than the surface to a warmer surface, contradicts the 2nd law.

In his book, Atmospheric Radiation, Craig Bohren, pointed an IR device at clouds and got a reading of around 0C. Clear sky produced a reading of -50C. Are we to accept that heat can be transferred from clouds or an atmosphere in such conditions when the surface has an average temperature of +15C?

I might add that the GHE theory is based on the notion that GHGs in the atmosphere have warmed the surface by 33C. Based on the 2nd law, that implies the atmosphere must have been a lot warmer that solar radiation alone.

I don’t feel inclined to work it our but a moment’s reflection tells me the atmosphere must have been a whole lot warmer in order to transfer the heat required to raise the surface temperature by 33C.

If you give up with the fake physics and just entertain the view of established physics.

The EMR (downwelling IR) and the solar input flux are both absorbed by the surface. With an atmosphere containing GHG you get a flux of DWIR (which can easily be measured, or derived from calibrated sensors, and is at numerous locations…empirical data). The amount of GHG and the temperature of the atmosphere determine the DWIR.

If you understand the process you will see that the 2nd Law is not violated at all. You just have to be able to see each flow of energy (solar and DWIR) as separate and independent energy inputs to the Earth’s surface.

The Earth’s surface emits average of 390 W/m^2. The atmosphere emits around 340 W/m^2 to the surface. The NET energy exchange is from HOT to COLD. The NET IR for the surface is negative, it is losing energy to the atmosphere.

But with the solar flux also being part of the equation the surface can and does warm more than if there were no atmosphere as an average. The average temperature of the Earth would be much colder without the DWIR adding energy to the surface.

“The PSMSL did not immediately respond for a request for comment, but other scientists were critical of the study for citing too few locations and for being published in a low-tier journal.

I have some major concerns about the credibility of this study, Kristina Dahl, a scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Fox News.

It is very unusually written. … This paper also appears to have been published just one month after being received by the journal, which is an astoundingly short time that calls into question the quality of the peer-review process.

The journal that published it is based in Saudi Arabia and is associated with King Abdulaziz University. It just started operating this year.

This specific journal is new but well above average, said Albert Parker, one of the co-authors a retired scientist and former automotive engineer who has written many papers on sea levels and also goes by the name Alberto Boretti.

Immense northern storms on Saturn can disturb atmospheric patterns at the planet’s equator, finds the international Cassini mission in a study led by Dr Leigh Fletcher from the University of Leicester.

This effect is also seen in Earth’s atmosphere, suggesting the two planets are more alike than previously thought.
Despite their considerable differences, the atmospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn all display a remarkably similar phenomenon in their equatorial regions: vertical, cyclical, downwards-moving patterns of alternating temperatures and wind systems that repeat over a period of multiple years.
These patterns—known as the Quasi-Periodic Oscillation (QPO) on Saturn and the Quasi-Quadrennial Oscillation (QQO) on Jupiter, due to their similarities to Earth’s so-called Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO)—appear to be a defining characteristic of the middle layers of a planetary atmosphere.
Earth’s QBO is regular and predictable, repeating every 28 months on average. However, it can be disrupted by events occurring at great distances from the equator of our planet—and a new study reveals that the same is true of Saturn’s QPO.
“These oscillations can be thought of as a planet’s heartbeat,” says Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester, UK, lead author of the study (published in Nature Astronomy) and co-investigator of Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). “Cassini spotted them on Saturn about a decade ago, and Earth-based observations have seen them on Jupiter, too. Although the atmospheres of the distant gas giants may appear startlingly different to our own, when we look closely we start to discover these familiar natural patterns.”

ren…there’s obviously something going on with Earth’s climate system that no one understands. We are far too focused on the pseudo-science of AGW to spend the required effort to understand the climate based on real forces, we have become content with the virtual nonsense in climate models.

Over here, we have a saying, “you can’t see the forest for the trees”. Don’t know if that translates well in your language but it means you cannot see the forest because there are trees blocking your view. It’s ridiculous because the trees are the forest.

In climate science, we cannot see the real climate systems because we are looking for a ridiculous cause for warming and climate change.

I think we should be exploring natural systems such as those presented at your link. Climate scientists should be investigating the Little Ice Age in an attempt to understand why it happened. Instead, they have completely ignored the LIA and latched onto an inane theory in which a negligible quantity of atmospheric CO2 is allegedly causing catastrophic warming.

Our studies are showing that the Mediterranean diet which is rich in nuts and beans and has a lot of fish, maybe chicken once a week, maybe red meat only once a month if everyone were to move toward it, its the equivalent of taking about a billion or more cars of pollution out of the planet every year, said Houlton.

To put that in perspective, Houltons models show that global adoption of a Mediterranean diet could help reduce global warming by up to 15 percent by 2050.

The Mediterranean diet has additional benefits. Previous studies have found that a Mediterranean diet can reduce the incidence of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases. Multiple studies have linked the Mediterranean diet to increased overall longevity.

snape…”To put that in perspective, Houltons models show that global adoption of a Mediterranean diet could help reduce global warming by up to 15 percent by 2050″.

Models???

You mean the sci-fi models programmed with CO2 having a 9% to 25% effect on warming? Shall we prove that first? If you go with real science, like with the Ideal Gas Equation and Dalton’s Law the diet will have absolutely no effect on global warming because CO2 has no effect on it.

snape…”its the equivalent of taking about a billion or more cars of pollution out of the planet every year, said Houlton”.

Houlton needs to prove that first. There is absolutely no proof that CO2 emissions based on an atmospheric concentration of 0.04% has any effect on global warming. ACO2 is 4% of that value according to the IPCC.

That is not even close to correct, Gordon, as several commentators recently pointed out”.

The commenters are wrong. This information comes from the IPCC and is based on a CO2 concentration of 390 ppmv. In words, close to the graph to which this comment applies, the IPCC states that ACO2 is a small fraction of natural CO2, which makes up 96% of all CO2 in the atmosphere.

The argument put forward by commenters is that ACO2 makes up 30% of all CO2, but when the IPCC inferred the 4% value for ACO2 they did so based on a concentration of 390 ppmv, which means all ACO2 in the past is now natural CO2.

There is no prove that amount of CO2, about 0.04% of atmospheric gases, can warm the atmosphere so how is the current CO2 emissions claimed by Houlton going to warm the atmosphere?

There is a great deal of speculation involved in claiming ACO2 has increased the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from the pre Industrial Era till now. The only proof put forward is CO2 gas bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. Since the Antarctic waters and climate are frigid much of the atmospheric CO2 in that local will have been absorbed by the cold ocean, since CO2 is easily absorbed in cold water.

On top of that Jaworowski has issued an excellent, scientific article explaining how CO2 is processed into ice and how it is affected by drilling the ice. He claimed the actual CO2 levels pre-Industrial could have been 30 to 50% higher, ranging from 351 ppmv to 405 ppmv.

When you add up all the conditions available for CO2 absorp.tion, the figure put forward by the IPCC of 270 ppmv for the pre Industrial Era is highly speculative. Look at the mess Mann et al made of the hockey stick by relying on tree ring proxies. In the 20th century, the proxy temps were showing a decline while real temps were rising.

The claim that CO2 levels could have been 30% – 50% higher seems reasonable since global temperatures in the pre Industrial Era were 1C to 2C lower due to the Little Ice Age. A good deal of atmospheric CO2 would have been absorbed into the colder ocean water.

In his collation of scientists in the 19th and 20th century, Beck revealed studies in which CO2 levels were in the 350 – 400 ppmv range, Kreutz finding levels over 400 ppmv in the 1930s.

snape…”Whether you agree or not, the IPCC believes the pre-industrial CO2 level was about 280 ppm”.

Belief is not proof.

Syun Akasofu, the astronomer who was a pioneer in studies of the solar wind, claims the IPCC erred by not considering the conditions under which their claim of anthropogenic warming is based, in the Industrial Era. They failed to inform anyone that global temps were at least 1C below normal due to the Little Ice Age.

There are serious implications surrounding such an obfuscation. The planet had to re-warm 1C at least to overcome the cooling effect of the natural forces that caused the LIA. The IPCC blamed that re-warming on anthropogenic gases and they needed a CO2 value of 280 ppmv to support their pseudo-science.

If the IPCC has mislead people as to that reality, after acknowledging in their 1990 review that both the LIA and Medieval Warming Period are genuine, why should we believe them when they claim the pre Industrial CO2 concentration was 280 ppmv?

Furthermore, after acknowledging the MWP and LIA in the 1990 review, why did they allow the hockey stick graph in 1998 which erased the MWP and LIA to get a straight shaft on their pseudo-science hockey stick? And why did they re-instate the LIA/MWP latter after the hockey stick was debunked?

They obviously cherry picked that number to suit their pseudo-scientific claims.

“On the other hand, the claim that a two-century linear temperature increase is a recovery from a recent cool period is not supported by the data. Furthermore, this thermal recovery hypothesis is not connected to any physical phenomenon; rather it is a result of a simplistic and incorrect curve-fitting operation. Other errors in the article are: the claim that the heating of the Earth has halted, misunderstanding of the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and the resultant radiative forcing, and a failure to account for forcings other than carbon dioxide (such as other greenhouse gases, atmospheric aerosols, land use changes, etc.). Each of these errors brings serious question to the conclusions drawn in the referenced article. The simultaneous occurrence of all of these errors in a single study guarantees that its conclusions cannot be supported and, in fact, are demonstrably incorrect.”

Here it is straight from the IPCC but they have obfuscated the reality of 0.04% by using a convoluted graph. Why?? What are they trying to hide?

On the page before the graph they state: “Although the anthropogenic fluxes of CO2 between the atmosphere and both the land and ocean are just a few percent of the gross natural fluxes, they have resulted in measurable changes in the carbon content of the reservoirs since pre-industrial times as shown in red”.

The second part of this statement is sheer speculation based on ice core proxies and generous cherry picking.

You can calculate the ‘few percent’ by using this graph correctly but it was done by the Department of Energy at one point. Here is a tabular representation of the IPCC graph:

Note: WordPress, as we know has an anal think about an r and p or a p or t used as in absorp-tion. There is an rp.t series in this URL so I have added a dot as above in rp.t. Remove the dot and paste into your browser.

Thanks for sticking to my comment. I no longer think you’re suffering from dementia………just a little confused. Here, again, is what you wrote:

“There is absolutely no proof that CO2 emissions based on an atmospheric concentration of 0.04% has any effect on global warming. ACO2 is 4% of that value according to the IPCC.”

You are correct that CO2 makes up about 0.04% of the atmosphere. You
are NOT correct that the anthropogenic portion of that percentage is only 4%. As several commentators, including myself have explained, it’s actually around 30%

What’s confusing you, I think, is the carbon cycle. Each year, the atmosphere takes up a lot of carbon from natural sources. Obviously there is an anthropogenic contribution as well, but as the report explained, it’s only a small percentage of the total. ( A similar amount of CO2 is also removed each year by natural sources, completing the cycle.)

As I stated above, however, the total volume of CO2 in the atmosphere at any given moment is around .04%, about 30% of which is considered anthropogenic.

svante, or whomever you were before changing your nym, the SkS crowd have revealed themselves as being several bricks shy of a load. They have impersonated physicist Lubos Motl and dressed up in Nazi uniforms. If you deem such a source worthy of science, I’ll be very careful to consider what you write from here on in.

Respected climatologist, RogerPielke, Sr., took SkS to task for seriously ad homming John Christy and Roy Spencer of UAH. Here, SkS is at it again:

lewis…”Gordon, I recommend against the term pseudoscience and suggest religion”.

Recommendation noted. I have used the religion inference on occasion. I have accused certain alarmists of sitting in the front row at realclimate or SkS revival meetings, in their schoolboy caps and short pants, absorbing every bit of the propaganda.

snape…”You are correct that CO2 makes up about 0.04% of the atmosphere. You are NOT correct that the anthropogenic portion of that percentage is only 4%. As several commentators, including myself have explained, its actually around 30%…”

I am aware of the complexities of the carbon cycle and its annual growth but I supplied you evidence from the IPCC that the percent of natural CO2 made up by ACO2 is less than 4% based on 390 ppmv.

I understand your argument about the theoretical accumulation of CO2 since the pre Industrial era. The IPCC data I quoted is from the 1990s decade only which presumes the accumulated ACO2 till 1990 is now natural CO2.

Still, this debate began with a quote from Houlton who claimed the gas from cows and livestock could lead to catastrophic warming and climate change. He was obviously referring to current ACO2 emissions which the IPCC revealed are in the neighbourhood of 3% of natural CO2.

I fail to see how such a minute increase in CO2, with a concentration of 0.04% could lead to any catastrophe. I don’t accept that the 0.04% is significant wrt warming.

Houlton was not referring to your alleged 30% figure, he was talking about the current level, claimed to be 400 ppmv.

I said, “There is absolutely no proof that CO2 emissions based on an atmospheric concentration of 0.04% has any effect on global warming. ACO2 is 4% of that value according to the IPCC”.

ACO2 to me is the CO2 we are emitting right now, not what has been emitted in the past. Past ACO2 is now well mixed with CO2 from natural sources and I include it as part of the overall natural CO2 cycle. That’s why I am careful to declare the concentration to which I am referring.

The IPCC used a CO2 concentration of 390 ppmv and they explained that past ACO2 is now included in that figure. In the article to which I linked, they were examining ACO2 emitted in the 1990s and declared it a small percent of natural CO2.

Natural CO2 from the oceans and vegetation far outweighs ACO2. The figures given were around 770,000 million metric tones to about 23,000 mmt for ACO2. Why has that 770,000 mmt not affected global warming yet ACO2 at 3% of that value has some magical quality that allows it to cause catastrophic warming and climate change?

snape….”Only CO2 present in the atmosphere affects global temperature. 31% of which is the result of human activity”.

This where you have to be careful with graphs and statistics. 400 ppmv means 0.04% of the atmosphere is CO2. Are you arguing that 30% of that 400 ppmv is from anthropogenic sources? If so, you’ll need to prove that far more effectively than the IPCC and their ice core proxies.

The 30% level is a theory based on antedated proxies. I don’t trust proxies as far as you can throw them. The truth is, no one knows how much of that 400 ppmv is made up of anthropogenic sources.

There is another truth. Scientists have been measuring atmospheric CO2 since the 19th century. Beck has collated studies from many of them who claimed CO2 levels of CO2 in the atmosphere exceeding 400 ppmv. Why was the work of those good scientists ignored?

There is another truth. Satellites launched to measure CO2 have revealed that the natural CO2 from vegetation in Africa and South America dwarf anthropogenic emissions. Those natural emissions have been there for centuries, why did they not cause catastrophic warming and climate change?

And why is it only your alleged 30%, that is anthropogenic, cause warming? Why did the other 280 ppmv cause none? Please don’t offer the GHE as an example, I regard that hypothesis as nonsense.

Your argument is inconsistent. Are you claiming the increase from 280 ppmv to 400 ppmv came only from anthropogenic sources? That’s ridiculous, it excludes changes in CO2 out-gassing from the oceans from the warming that dwarf CO2 emissions.

How about growth in vegetation due to the increased CO2?

Do you not understand that AGW theorists have changed the environmental parameters, in some cases wildly cherry-picking, to arrive at nonsense like your 30% increase?

Even if it’s true, the 0.04% caused no catastrophic warming/climate change, why should 30% of that value make a difference?

snape…another point. It was demonstrated by the IPCC, based on a CO2 concentration of 390 ppmv, that ‘current’ ACO2 levels were only 3% of that value. Once again, why has the 97% of CO2 representing natural CO2 been left out of the equation? If anything was going to warm the atmosphere it would be that vastly larger number.

Even at that, according to the Ideal Gas Law and Dalton Law, the 0.04% of all CO2 has essentially no effect on atmospheric warming. ACO2 is a totally minor player in warming the atmosphere.

Snape,
I detect not this paranoid tone. Perhaps we are perceiving something to suit ourselves.

But, anyway, Gordon’s point about why the natural CO2 doesn’t cause warming, only the ACO2, is a point worth debating. Whether the number is 4% or 30% is immaterial in this discussion. But it seems the argument is always concerning control of ACO2 and how terrible it is.

Which returns me to my belief that the entire ACO2 alarm theory is about government control of the economic system, more exactly, the people.

It’s my assumption that 400 ppm “natural” CO2 would have exactly the same forcing on temperature as 400 ppm ACO2. Here is the only physical difference I could find:

“An important difference between CO2 from natural sources and CO2 from fossil fuels is the age of the carbon it contains. Younger natural sources of CO2 are relatively rich in carbon-14. But since carbon-14 has a half-life of about 5,700 years, it cant be found in fossil fuels that are millions of years old.”

svante…”Gordon, SkS has a lot of good information, but I dont agree with their characterisation of John Christy”.

That’s good to know, I think John has demonstrated his integrity and his humanity. The point is, why would a reputable site print nonsense like that if not to discredit skeptics?

I have read what Cook has to say and even if I could not agree with it I initially received it as a scientist trying to express his opinion. Then the goofiness began, impersonating Lubos Motl, and wearing a Nazi uniform. To top it off, I learned he has an undergrad degree in physics and worked as a cartoonist.

There is no need for scientists to fire derogatory shots at other scientists. It’s one thing with us writing on a blog like Roy’s but it’s quite another when scientists begin ostracizing other scientists, causing them their jobs and even their careers.

Dr. Peter Duesberg claimed in the early days of HIV research that HIV is a harmless virus that could not possibly defeat an immune system, especially after lying dormant for 15 years. He claimed further that the potent drugs offered to kill off HIV, like AZT, were causing AIDS-like symptoms in people, calling it ‘AIDS by prescription’. Today, drug companies offer a disclaimer in which they admit their antiviral drugs can produce IRS, which is essentially drug-induced AIDS.

He was ostracized, being demoted from a full professor to a prof looking after lab experiments. He lost his credibility. Now, 20 years later he is being vindicated by the scientist who discovered HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier. He has claimed HIV will not harm a healthy immune system.

Duesberg has claimed that all along, that it’s lifestyle that leads to AIDS, not HIV.

svante…”As always, you really have to get to the science, the kind of science you find at reputable traditional universities”.

I agree. However, I’ve had a fairly extensive training in undergraduate math, physics, and chemistry, and it has given me the ability to sense whether a scientific claim has merit. Of course, that cannot always be the case since there are specialized disciplines where in-depth knowledge is required to understand them.

I don’t think that’s the case in general climate science, especially as it applies to AGW theory. That science is based largely on basic physics, chemistry, and thermodynamics.

Some people think the skill required to analyze complex physics is beyond anyone who has not received a degree from university. There is nothing to stop anyone from following a study of academia and forming expertise. MIT even offers free university level courses that teach calculus, for example, to as deep a level as one can learn it at university.

binny…re your article from Engelbeen, I have read his drivel before. He makes this statement near the beginning:

“That, together with the historical measurements of Ernst Beck…”

Beck did not make historical measurements, he collated studies from authentic scientists. Englebeen has dismissed those scientists as not knowing what they were doing yet he has no expertise in that kind of science.

One of those scientists, Kreutz, made over 25,000 measurements and took great pains to ensure the measurements were not influenced by external forces. He claim a CO2 concentration of 400 ppmv back in the 1930s.

Englebeen is a nit-picker who uses red-herring arguments to establish his proficiency.

He questions Jaworowski’s claim that melt water from drilling during the retrieval of ice cores dilutes the CO2 yet he seems to have completely misunderstood what Jaworoski claimed. He states: “There is not the slightest evidence that liquids in the ice at the extreme cold temperatures in Antarctica play any role in the CO2 values measured”.

Well, duh-h-h-h!! Whose talking about the temperatures in Antarctica, we’re talking about the meting of ice as the drills dig into it.

He is also hypocritical. He claims to be a responsible climate skeptic yet he goes after true skeptics like Jaworowski and Beck.

Sorry for the jab. With your comment i must have mistaken you for someone else… i found the theory quite interesting. Without scientists presenting honest theory we have nothing. None are absolutely 100% correct. There may be pieces in his theory that will eventually contribute to the bigger picture.

Gordon Robertson read what occurred during the solar minimum 2008/2009.
Abstract. In a case study of a remarkable major sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) during the boreal winter 2008/09, we investigate how transport and mixing triggered by this event affected the composition of the entire stratosphere in the Northern Hemisphere.https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/15/8695/2015/

lewis…”mpainter was banned for continual and unabated rudeness.
DAppell came close to the same end. Also, another fellow was banned who cannot be named because doing so would cause this note to be deleted”.

I have likely come close and I have to thank Roy for his tolerance and patience.

A word from Neils Bohr who put forward our current model of atomic structure:

“Thus we must assume that a system consisting of a nucleus and an electron rotating round it under certain circumstances can absorb a radiation of a frequency equal to the frequency of the homogenous radiation emitted during the passing of the system between different stationary states…”

That makes it abundantly clear that all atoms can absorb and emit only under specific conditions. It puts to rest the notion that all radiation must be absorbed by an atom. Only EM that matches the energy level difference between electron orbitals can be absorbed.

Energy exchange between colliding atoms is another matter. All forms of atomic states, translational, vibrational, and rotational are explained by electrons. There is nothing else in an atom beyond the sub-atomic level that produce EM.

“That makes it abundantly clear that all atoms can absorb and emit only under specific conditions. It puts to rest the notion that all radiation must be absorbed by an atom. Only EM that matches the energy level difference between electron orbitals can be absorbed.”

Yup!

And in the case of longer wavelengths (far IR), it also requires “special” molecules. Not any molecule will work. So for IR “acceptance” to occur, it takes the right wavelength AND and the right molecule. IR “acceptance” is NOT automatic, or even guaranteed.

g*r….”And in the case of longer wavelengths (far IR), it also requires special molecules. Not any molecule will work. So for IR acceptance to occur, it takes the right wavelength AND and the right molecule”.

Svante produced an interesting link earlier in this thread (I think) in which the author revealed that it’s the electrons in atoms that are responsible for molecular absorp-tion. The special molecules to which you refer, such as CO2, have a linear bonding arrangement with valence electrons supplying the bonds between a carbon atom in the middle and oxygen atoms at each end.

It is the electrons in the CO2 molecule that absorb and emit EM. Obviously the arrangement of the electrons around the atoms in their orbitals is such that they respond to the lower frequency EM of IR. Nitrogen and oxygen molecules have similar proton-electron arrangements by which those molecules absorb and emit EM at higher frequencies.

Some claim CO2 absorbs EM due to vibrations in the molecule but it’s the electrons again that are responsible for the vibration.

Vibration is due to the interaction of positive and negative charges between proton and electrons, acting like a spring-mass system. Electrons act like the springs while protons in the nucleus supply the mass. However, lesser vibration can be the result of dipoles, where +ve and -ve charges can develop due to an excess or lack of electron charges and either end of a bond.

I can’t look at a molecule without seeing the electrons and protons. All I see is +vely charged nuclei bonded together by valence electrons. In organic chemistry, if you look at a molecule consisting of a long chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms what you are seeing is carbon and hydrogen nucleii with the lines between them representing electron bonds.

A moment in physics as you know is due to the motion of a body or particle about a centre. A force turning about a centre is referred to as torque.

A dipole moment in a molecule like CO2 consists of the outer oxygen atoms forming a double bond with the central carbon atom. The bonds can vibrate linearly or the O atoms can try to rotate about the CO2 atom. In the latter case, the dipole represents a dipole moment as it turns.

The article claims EM can be absorbed or emitted as the dipole moment moves. However, there are two modes of linear motion, one where the O2 molecules are moving apart and one where one moves in while the other moves away. In the former, the dipole charges are the same and no IR can be absorbed, but with the latter, the charges are different and EM can be absorbed. Same with the rotational moments.

I cannot buy that argument completely for a couple of reasons. For one, the difference in charges in the dipoles is dependent on electron charge and the electrons in either O2 molecule could be struck by EM at any time. It’s either a case of both being struck at the same time, as in a wave action, or individual photons striking one set of electrons and not the other. And what’s wrong with EM striking the C atom electrons?

The other reason is the article is treating molecules tritely as units with mechanical lever arms and springs which can magically supply electric charges. Those are in fact electrons forming the dipoles and supplying the charges. Based on the article I presented earlier by Bohr, electrons, period, are the focus and it does not matter if they are around carbon atoms or oxygen atoms.

The electrons are shared between the O and C atoms so how does one tell?

Wouldn’t it be wild if it was eventually revealed that N2 and O2 absorb and emit IR perfectly at certain temperatures?

Another thought. The electrons forming the bonds in the CO2 molecules theoretically orbit both atoms, holding the positively charged nucleii together. It’s not hard to visualize that the vibrational effect of the electrons on the nucleii could depend on exactly where the electron are located when they absorbs IR.

If that’s true, the reason for CO2 absorbing IR become seriously complex and cannot be written off simply as dipole action.

Can you imagine an electron orbiting an oxygen and carbon combo while receiving a shot of IR? It jumps to a higher electron orbital but those orbitals are likely at different levels on either atom.

DA…”CO2 absorbs IR because if its molecular vibrational and rotational states. It has nought to do with electrons”.

Tell me what’s vibrating in their Mr. Rocketscientist? Molecules are aggregations of atoms and atoms are formed from the equal and opposite charges on protons in the nucleus and electrons orbiting the nucleus and forming bonds between atoms to form molecules.

Atoms are basically electrons and protons and atoms joined together to form molecules are electrons and protons. However, the electron is the only particle able to move around freely in its orbit therefore it’s the only one that can absorb and emit EM.

If you don’t understand that you may as well stop commenting. Better still, if you don’t understand that most basic of atomic theory, don’t study organic chemistry.

g*r…”I like to describe it as a molecule is like a small antenna. Just as antenna elements are cut for a specific wavelength, so certain molecules are just right for incoming wavelengths”.

Whatever works for you. Actually the end process is like a little antenna, with the electric charge on the electron forming an EM field. Any moving electron is an electric charge with a magnetic field around it. I presume the leap downward between energy states acts like an emitting antenna.

When you try to figure out the frequency of the emission, however, it gets dicy. In a radio transmitter, the frequency is determined within the transmitter using oscillators that are sometime stabilized with crystals. The frequency that the electron emits at is built into the energy state of the orbital which also represents its level of heat.

All the systems of units which have hitherto been employed, including the so-called absolute C.G.S. system, owe their origin to the coincidence of accidental circumstances, inasmuch as the choice of the units lying at the base of every system has been made, not according to general points of view which would necessarily retain their importance for all places and all times, but essentially with reference to the special needs of our terrestrial civilization.

Thus the units of length and time were derived from the present dimensions and motion of our planet, and the units of mass and temperature from the density and the most important temperature points of water, as being the liquid which plays the most important part on the surface of the earth, under a pressure which corresponds to the mean properties of the atmosphere surrounding us”.

For those who believe time exists as a separate dimension, this may come as a shock. As Planck claimed, ‘units of length and time were derived from the present dimensions and motion of our planet’.

That becomes abundantly clear when examined without bias but why people over a hundred years later are still baffled by that reality is a mystery.

John…I have never seen Roy comment this far into a blog article but Svensmark seems to be onto something. Furthermore, he has made it onto the pages of the uber-alarmist desmogblog site which means he has made them very uncomfortable with their extreme AGW views.

A quote from Svensmark, posted on desmogblog:

During the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted away many of them. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer cloudsand a warmer world”.

“We’re experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, “so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age.”

Solar irradiance has been very low in 2017 as well. This was posted just two weeks ago:

“Solar cycle 24 has turned out to be historically weak with the lowest number of sunspots since cycle 14 peaked more than a century ago in 1906 and by some measures, it is the third weakest since regular observations began around 1755. This historically weak solar cycle continues a weakening trend in solar irradiance output since solar cycle 21 peaked around 1980 and the sun is fast-approaching the next solar minimum. The last solar minimum lasted from 2008 to 2009 and the sun was as quiet during that time as it has been since 1978. The sun is likely to enter the next solar minimum phase within three years or so. The sun has been spotless for 26% of the time in 2017 (90 days) and the blank look should increase in frequency over the next couple of years leading into the next solar minimum.”

Zeke Hausfather‏ @hausfath Dec 19:
“One fundamental problem with the hypothesis that cosmic rays influence modern warming via clouds is that its moving in wrong direction. Since 1960, amount of GCRs reaching the Earth has increased. If GCRs were a major influence on climate, would result in cooling, not warming.”

Who cares. The point is that N2/O2, which makes up 99% of the atmosphere can absorb heat directly from the surface, or due to collisions in the atmosphere, and radiate the heat away at the frequency that suits that radiation. If oxygen radiates in the microwave range, who cares? You are anal about the IR band.

Some alarmists are hung up on the notion that only GHGs, which make up 30% of the overall atmosphere, are the only gases able to cool by radiation. Any gas will cool by radiation if the surroundings are cooler than the gas.

DA…”Another sign of a crackpot is their thinking that because they dont know something, no one else does either”.

The point is, Mr. Rocketscientist, the LIA did exist and your link corroborates that. The IPCC corroborated both the LIA and the MWP in their 1990 review then stood by in 1998 as Mann et al erased both to make the shaft on the hockey stick straight. Then they had to wipe egg off their faces and re-instate the LIA and MWP after the hockey stick was debunked as bad math and bad science.

The LIA could not possibly have existed only in Europe as you have claimed. Global temps were 1C to 2C below normal for 400 years and that could not have happened while restricted to a locale like Europe.

Speaking of crackpots, then the IPCC completely ignored the reduced global temps when they established their lame theory that rewarming from the LIA was actually caused by anthropogenic gases, the main culprit being a gas that has never exceeded 0.04% of the atmosphere.

Nowhere does the IPCC seriously consider what may have caused such an abrupt cooling simply because there mandate is to find proof of anthropogenic causes. What kind of crackpots would issue such a mandate?

Today, more crackpots like you and binny insist that theory (AGW) is correct when real evidence stares you in the face to the contrary.

My reference to modern climate scientists studying the LIA was to see if it’s probable cause could shed light on the enormous natural forces at work that could cool the atmosphere that much over 400 years.

Sorry guys, I realize I am talking at a level neither of you can comprehend. Sometimes it sucks having intelligence and feeling compelled to use it, as opposed to you and binny foregoing your natural born intelligence in order to fit in to a cause while appealing to authority.

There’s an upside to acting dumb to fit in: if we all applied for grants, you’d get yours long before I got mine.

Gordon Robertson wrote:
“My reference to modern climate scientists studying the LIA was to see if its probable cause could shed light on the enormous natural forces at work that could cool the atmosphere that much over 400 years.”

That’s a lie — you clearly claimed scientists hadn’t studied the LIA but have ignored it:

“Climate scientists should be investigating the Little Ice Age in an attempt to understand why it happened. Instead, they have completely ignored the LIA….”

In comparison with the tremendous amount of aerosols released into the atmosphere at that time, even the coincidence of all known solar minima (Wolf, Maunder, Spoerer, Oort, Dalton) seems like a historical detail.

In 1258, about 33% of London’s population died. This has been recorded in writings of that time.

For a long time, the plague was believed to be the cause until skeletons were found in mass graves, all pointing to a lack of nutrition.

binny…”An eruption with such a high explosivity index and such an amount of ejected material didnt happen in the last thousands of years”.

Get real!! Are you suggesting volcanic aerosols could cause a cooling of the magnitude of the LIA over 400 years?

“In 1258, about 33% of Londons population died. This has been recorded in writings of that time.

For a long time, the plague was believed to be the cause until skeletons were found in mass graves, all pointing to a lack of nutrition”.

That’s tantamount to the denial that 12 million people were systematically tortured and killed in Nazi concentration camps. Some of the deniers claim the camps were health camps, where people were instituted because they had diseases like TB.

There is no doubt nutrition was a factor in people succumbing to the plague just as it was a factor following WW I when a flu epidemic broke out. However, to write off the plague as a simple nutritional deficiency is ridiculous.

Ridiculous as it may be, it’s helping me gain insight into why you’d accept AGW verbatim while upholding the cheaters at NOAA. You just need to believe something.

Have you ever thought of discarding belief altogether? It serves no purpose, it’s akin to claiming, “I can’t prove this but I think it’s true”.

binny…why should I read an article claiming volcanic activity can explain the LIA in conjunction with mysterious processes in the oceans that are completely ignored by AGW.

From the article:

“A transient climate model simulation shows that explosive volcanism produces abrupt summer cooling at these times, and that cold summers can be maintained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks long after volcanic aerosols are removed”.

What sea-ice/ocean feedbacks could maintain a global cooling for 400 years? And what is a sea-ice/ocean feedback? These people throw the word feedback around like it means something.

They are obviously raving climate modelers.

And why just summer cooling? Are they suggesting only the summers cooled, as AGW idiots claim warming for one month of the Arctic summer means something?

A negative feedback is an attenuation, a positive feedback is a gain above unity. PF is used in servomechanisms as an indicator of sign only, nothing to do with gain. How do these authors justify throwing around a notion like sea-ice/ocean feedbacks to explain a 1C to 2C global cooling over 400 years?

“The idea is that in many non-linear systems (of which the climate is certainly one), a small push away from one state only has small effects at first but at some ‘tipping point’ the system can flip and go rapidly into another state. This is fundamentally tied to the existence of positive feedbacks . However, [tipping point] is currently being used interchangeably a number of potentially confusing ways and so I thought I’d try and make it a little clearer”.

Then:

“A positive feedback occurs when a change in one component of the climate occurs, leading to other changes that eventually ‘feeds back’ on the original change to amplify it”.

This is not only wrong it’s silly. Feedback does NOT CAUSE AMPLIFICATION, it is part of a system of amplification where an amplifier is employed.

I’ll repeat that for you APPELL because you tend to be somewhat obtuse about such science. A separate amplifier is required for positive feedback to work. You cannot reach a tipping point without external amplification.

Then he tried to use math, making an utter fool of himself:

“A simple example leads to a geometric series for instance; i.e. if an initial change to a parameter is D, and the feedback results in an additional rD then the final change will be the sum of D+rD+r2D…etc.”

This is simply not true. He has applied rD to the amplifier and not to the input signal where it belongs. Feedback has no effect on the amplifier, only on the input signal. The gain (amplification) of an amplifier must remain constant and with an electronic amplifier you could not add rA to the output. You can only add feedback to the input signal.

The proper equation for feedback is G = A/(1-bA).

In this scenario, G is the overall gain, A is the amplifier stage gain, and b is +ve feedback provided it’s sign adds to the input signal. The bA component is the fraction of the amplified signal fed back and added to the input signal, not to the amplified signal.

1. The problem I have with that statistic is that it does not look at temperature records that are complete to the 1900s.

bilybob’s problem I can understand: I myself thought it would be some kind of bloody alarmista stuff. It looks indeed a bit exxagerated due to this choice “more highs than lows”, but it is in fact correct.

I had some time to spend to obtain the info as we both wished. I still didn’t manage to process the GHCN ‘V4 daily’ record, but using ‘V3 monthly’ (unadjusted) should be satisfying.

Here is a chart comparing, for each year during the period 1880-2016, the running percentage of the stations having shown in that year their highest resp. lowest monthly temperature averages during their own recording period:

Running percentages were used to compare highs and lows with the number of stations active in the year thy did occur: it makes a difference when looking at 340 lows in a year with 6000 or 2000 active stations a that time.

But for all these strange skeptics ready to argue against that, I propose to have a look at

DA…”If youre not using adjusted data youre going to end up with gibberish”.

Unfortunately you regard the truth as gibberish.

Adjustment is good if it is allowing for variations in the instrumentation provided an error margin is supplied. Science works that way. You can get an overall picture while allowing for the error.

It’s a different matter altogether when good data collected from thermometers is thrown out then re-created in a climate model by interpolating and homogenizing less than 25% of the collected data to synthesize the discarded data.

It gets even worse when people like NOAA and Had-crut go back in history and throw out temperature readings they ‘believe’ don’t fit. Interpolating and homogenizing historical temperature data should be made a crime punishable by jail time.

Then there are those like NOAA and GISS who deliberately present falsehoods regarding record warming years. They do it by adjusting the confidence level till the chosen year becomes the warmest. Presenting 2014 as the warmest year ever based on a confidence level of 48% should be made a crime.

In my honest opinion, incessant discrediting of companies and their employees, through repeated spreading of lies concerning their work, especially behind a fakename, should become a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment.

My understanding is that max temperature data is not be adjusted. These are simply the record high temperature recorded for that site. Let me know if I am wrong on that. I do not have an issue with the temperature data being adjusted/aggregated for modeling average temperature anomalies. As long as the methodology is sound. However, when discussing max temperatures records, I just don’t see the value in the statistic relating the ratio of new high vs. new low given that the majority come from sites that only have been in existence less than 50 years. In Table 6.2 and Figures 6.3 and 6.4, you will see that extreme temperatures are down.

Or the claim that the majority of sites with new maximum temperature records come from sites that do not have a history of at least 100 years. On this claim, I had asked if a study had been done up thread. I have only gone through a sample of about 100 US cities (I had some free time) outside of urbanized areas with records dating back to at least 1920 and have found that about 90% of the max temperature records are before 1960. I did this out of curiosity and would like to see a formal study to see if in fact the temperature range has been reduce (higher lows but lower highs). I believe this would only reinforce the information provided in Chapter 6 of the link above.

On the claim that max temperature records are not adjusted, that is just my understanding. If you have information to the contrary I would appreciate it.

Again if you could show me examples of where the max temperature record has been adjusted, I would greatly appreciate it. I have come across only which is Alice Springs where they do not report the Max temperature for the Post Office site that I believe went out of service in the 60’s rather only from another site that only goes back 50-60 years or so. Not sure of the exact years but the years where they overlap show the postal site was running about a 0.5C warmer. Not sure why GISS throws out the postal data but I am sure they have a legitimate reason.

However, you may have information the shows adjustments to historical max temperatures more common. I have just not seen it and assumed they are not normally adjusted. Also, not quite sure why this is even an issue for my original point that comparing the ratio of new temp maxs to new temp lows is useless if the locations do not go back to at least 1920 (adjusted or not).

Perhaps I am missing your point. Please elaborate, I would be interested.

Thanks for the info Bindidon. Will take a look at this when I can. As far as lies and distortion, I believe in Huff, that there are Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics. My response to Gordon was more of a clarification and may have been a bit over the top.

Has there been a study that just looks at stations that were in existence for a full 100 years and not tainted by the heat island affect?

The best is to do the following:
– to extract, out of e.g. the GHCN V3 metadata, those stations having both a rural character and the least nightlight level, and conversely
– to extract those stations having both an urban character and the highest nightlight level;
– to extract, out of the GHCN V3 data, all records produced by each station subset respectively, and finally
– to generate charts showing, like those above, the maxima and minima from 1880 till 2016 for these two data subsets.

I for one would like to see some good manners in the posts on this page.
‘Liar, windbag, troll, phoney’ – why all this?
You might well disagree strongly with someone – so why not reply with courtesy when stating your point of view?
The person you are being rude to is, like you, someone who has made their way through life and on the way has for example studied hard, and developed professional skills unique to their job.
In all likelihood as they’ve become older they’ve also had to deal with loss as loved ones and friends have died. We’re all human, and have to deal with whatever life throws at us as best we can.
Courtesy and friendliness cost nothing, and make the world a better place.

Of course, I’m talking about all the ignoramuses who day after day so idiotically and pathetically deny clearly established science such as the GHE or the anthropic origin of CO2 increase in atmosphere.

It’s patently preposterous and the sole real “bad manner” involved here is the relevant relentless insult this constitutes to reason, science and generations of scientists.

carbon…”I for one would like to see some good manners in the posts on this page. Liar, windbag, troll, phoney why all this?”

Since I am currently the focus of your question, please allow me to respond. The idiot name calling began when I tried to point out the outright cheating, based on political motives, of NOAA. They are currently under investigation by a US senate committee for that very thing.

That may have been preceded by me pointing out the IPCC announcement of 2013 that no global warming had occurred over the 15 year period between 1998 and 2012. Barry responded to that by calling me a liar. I posted a direct quote from the IPCC in which they give the numbers and called that period a ‘warming hiatus’. Barry offered no apology, rather he went off on a tangent about long term effects.

I did not respond by calling Barry an idiot. A bit later, I pointed out the practice of NOAA slashing it’s global data sets by over 75% then reconstructing the data sets in a climate model using real data from less than 25% of reporting stations. Again, Barry called me a liar.

I posted a direct link to NOAA in which they admitted slashing over 75% of their stations. Again, no apology from Barry, rather a long-winded obfuscation of how NOAA had actually increased the number of stations. He failed to point out that they increased station data using synthesized data, derived from historical data, using old data and a biased algorithm.

Then Bindidon chimed in with suggestions that I was some kind of idiot for questioning the integrity of NOAA. I responded by calling him an idiot for his naivete and penchant for appealing to authority.

Sorry, but I have no patience for ‘yes-men’, especially when they are spreading blatant propaganda based on outright cheating by NOAA, Had-crut, and the IPCC itself. A lot of people are going to be hurt by this propaganda which is geared by the UN to promoting it’s agenda for world government. They have tried unsuccessfully since the 1960s to implement a tax on world members, which they plan to hand out to poorer nations.

I have no issue with that basic premise, I just don’t want it to be done using science as a vehicle. They have no business spreading scientific nonsense to promote a political cause.

The IPCC itself was formed based on a political idea. Former UK PM Margaret Thatcher had a degree in chemistry and it was suggested by advisors that she use it to her advantage at the UN to get a movement going against pollution from coal. She was struggling with the British coal mining unions.

When someone falls for that propaganda, I cannot help regarding them as idiots. I ignore the troll comments but it is ironic that Roy has provided a blog based on his views that catastrophic global warming/climate change is unlikely and he has the data to prove it.

A troll would be someone who comments in this blog with the intention of disrupting debate geared to Roy’s POV. I support Roy’s position 100%, how can I be the troll? People like binny calling me a troll reveals he not only misunderstands the meaning of troll, he misunderstands the entire argument against catastrophic AGW.

The worst of the lot is David Appell, a major troll. He has taken to calling people a liar if they comment on anything with which he disagrees. He seldom offers proof to support his charge, he offers it as an authority. More idiotic arrogance.

Recently I have tried to point out that molecules are arrangements of electrons and protons, with electrons providing the bonds to hold atoms together. The electron is the only moving particle with a charge that could possibly emit electromagnetic radiation, but Appell called me a liar for suggesting that.

I don’t care about name calling, we used to call it ‘flaming’. Goes in one ear and out the other. What I care about is stupidity in science and we have a whole lot of it here coming out of alarmists.

ren…”In International Falls, Minnesota, the lowest daytime temperature on record for Christmas Day is minus 14 degrees set in 1996…”

Was that degrees C or F? Yanks tend to use degrees F. That’s -25C and more like it.

Not far above there, in Winnipeg, Canada, temps are known to drop occasionally to -35C from the end of November onward through winter. In the same year, 1996, it was -34.6C on Christmas morning in Winnipeg.

I recall one year when it was -50C in Winnipeg. I know, I was visiting a nearby prairie town and it was cold. Wasn’t too bad during the day, mind you, with the sun shining. There were tiny ice crystals falling from a clear sky and I had never seen that before. Pretty neat.

BTW…there are suggestions this year could be even colder in Winnipeg on Christmas day.

1)The temperatures from the National Weather Service in Duluth, Minnesota lists its temperatures in ‘degrees’, neither C nor F. It is presumed in the States that temperatures are in Fahrenheit. That goes with the presumption, I guess, that the United States is America and not merely part of it as the full name suggests.

WUWT has added the F to some of the temperatures. Small point, that could, and likely will be, classified as nit-picking, but come on folks, it’s 2017 and everyone can plainly see that the United States is not America. Perhaps when that anachronism took shape, no one knew America was a continent stretching from the Arctic Ocean to the tip of South America.

2)The same town mentioned by ren, International Falls, set a new record for cold with 8 days under -30F (-34C) in 2014 with a new record low of -42F. That was the year NOAA declared as the hottest year ever using a confidence level of 48%.

With all these cold records being set, makes me wonder if this entire AGW propaganda is a major fudge job.

DA…”if its not clear, C or F are close to one another. They agree at -40…”

It’s pretty apparent much of the time but ren posted an article for a city in Minnesota where a record was claimed for Christmas Day of -14 degrees. I should have guessed right off that -14 must be -14F since -14C is not that cold and not likely to be a record in late December in Minnesota.

They don’t need to. N2/O2 make up 99% of the atmosphere. Thye can absorb surface heat in a massive capacity through conduction then transfer it via convection high into the atmosphere where they can radiate it in cooler temperatures.

Radiative cooling of the surface is a red-herring argument. As Wood pointed out in 1909, radiative cooling is ineffective. The planet’s surface is cooled by convection after the air is heated by conduction. Lindzen has written a good article on that.

What do you mean by slower cooling? Do you mean a slower cooling of the actual surface or slower cooling reported by a human standing on the surface whose body is actually mainly in the atmosphere? Or has someone actually stood there night after night with a thermometer and calculated the rate of cooling.

That is fraught with issues as well. A person standing on a hill nearby might report different findings. There may be an inversion where another person is measuring nearby. How do we determine if your statement is true?

I have explained in the past that I am presenting a model of the atmosphere that is idealized and static. I am looking at N2/O2 heat transfer as if no other weather processes are taking place on top of it. I don’t think processes involving water vapour would have that much of an effect since WV is only about 0.3% of the atmosphere at large. If you had a very high humidity locally, where the percent of WV in the air was very higher, that may affect matters somewhat.

Clouds are another matter. My understanding is that clouds are modeled differently than water vapour. Clouds tend to be modeled as small lakes of water since they consist of droplets of water rather than the mist-like, invisible properties of WV.

I wonder if your question is accurate. There is an assumption that clouds can radiate IR back to the surface and warm it but that contradicts the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you pointed an IR measuring device at clouds of sufficient height, the meter would indicated a temperature much cooler than the surface or surface air. I am not claiming the clouds don’t radiate IR, I am only claiming the IR cannot be absorbed by a warmer surface because it comes from a cooler source.

Does the evidence of slower cooling on a cloudy night come from experimental evidence or is it anecdotal evidence?

Gordon Robertson says:
“They dont need to. N2/O2 make up 99% of the atmosphere. Thye can absorb surface heat in a massive capacity through conduction then transfer it via convection high into the atmosphere where they can radiate it in cooler temperatures.”

DA…”How would you prefer to deal with the biases that are present throughout the raw data?”

Read that again, would you? Biases in real data???

If I take a thermometer reading, hopefully I have the ability to read a thermometer, adjust my eyes for parallax, and give an estimate of the likely error. What needs to be adjusted?

The biases NOAA and GISS are seeing are temperatures that don’t fit their pre-conceived notion of catastrophic warming. Both Hansen and Schmidt of GISS have talked about tipping points, so their mentalities are geared to catastrophe. They have already tried to change the 1934 record for the US to 1998, and now presumably 2016.

The bias introduced to real data by a competent observer is very small. Small enough so as not to be significant in a trend analysis.

The real bias comes when statisticians look at data from the past while looking for proof of a warming trend. They see outliers which don’t fit their preconceived notions and amend the outlier because they think it does not fit.

I call that cheating.

It becomes egregious when people like NOAA interpolate and homogenize data from stations up to 1200 miles apart. That’s not only cheating, it scientific misconduct when such nonsense is applied to catastrophic global warming theory.

DA…”Within the first few minutes of his lecture he has claimed light from distant stars helps us see back in time.

Why doesnt it?”

Because there is no dimension of time through which we can look back. The only dimension is an illusion of time we have created in our minds.

Here’s a quote from Max Planck in his book on heat:

“164. Natural Units.

All the systems of units which have hitherto been employed, including the so-called absolute C. G. S. system, owe their origin to the coincidence of accidental circumstances, inasmuch as the choice of the units lying at the base of every system has been made, not according to general points of view which would necessarily retain their importance for all places and all times, but essentially with reference to the special needs of our terrestrial civilization.

Thus the units of length and time were derived from the present dimensions and motion of our planet, and the units of mass and temperature from the density and the most important temperature points of water, as being the liquid which plays the most important part on the surface of the earth, under a pressure which corresponds to the mean properties of the atmosphere surrounding us”.

More specifically:

“Thus the units of length and time were derived from the present dimensions and motion of our planet…”

That’s it. We derived time by building a machine, the clock, which would keep tract of one rotation of the planet. We subdivided that period down into seconds and our derived second is the basic unit in atomic clocks. Of course we have to amplify the tiny wavelengths of the atomic vibrations to reach a second.

The metre is based on a fraction of the length from the Equator to the North Pole. Today, that same derived metre is measured using more accurate measurements but it’s basically the same human derived unit of length. Therefore, distance and time came from the human mind and space-time has no existence other than in the human mind.

Lends new meaning to the term space-time warp. It’s the minds of the scientists that are warped, not a fictitious dimension of space-time.

As Planck claimed, mass and temperature are derived from the density of water and the boiling and freezing points of water respectively. Pressure is defined based on our atmosphere near the surface.

The dimension of time by which people claim a past has no reality, it’s an illusion.

***********

Why is the universe expanding? Who said it is? All we have are reports from arrogant, myopic scientists who regard Earth as the centre of the universe. The motion is measured from Earth and we have no idea whatsoever how large the universe might be or where its centre might be.

DA…”Ice reflects more sunlight than does ocean. Thats the sea-ice albedo feedback. You should have learned this long ago”.

Explain the feedback. Where does the feedback signal come from?

We were discussing a positive feedback, which is part of a feedback cycle with gain (amplification). Where is there amplification of solar energy in sea-ice albedo feedback?

If there is a feedback in such a process it has to be negative. Normally, the surface would absorb the available solar energy but if some is reflected back by ice or snow that cuts down the available solar energy for the surface.

Even at that, I don’t see that process as a feedback.

In an electronic amplifier, negative feedback is used to diminish the gain at certain frequencies to flatten the natural mid-frequency response effectively flattening the entire frequency range.

There is a true feedback signal involved that is fed from the output stage of the amp via a frequency sensitive network to the input stages several stages back. That signal reduces the input signal in the desired frequency range.

It is obvious to me that the notion of positive feedback has been adapted into climate science incorrectly. I think sea-ice ‘reflection’ covers the situation far more accurately. It’s not feedback.

Furthermore, in physics, feedback means what it says, a signal is fed back from the output of a process to the input of the process, to affect the overall process. Feedback is part of the process, not an amplifying agent.

There are two types of PF in electronics, one requiring amplification and the other dependent only on the sign of the signal as in positive or negative. The latter does not apply to our discussion, only to servo systems.

With positive feedback, an amplifier is required, since the gain must be greater than unity. Unity is the minimal gain for any amplifier. In electronics, unity gain, such as in a cathode/emitter follower, is used to buffer stages from each other.

Positive feedback makes no sense with gains of 1 or less, the gain has to be greater than 1, that is the definition upon which PF is based. You cannot have a gain greater than 1 without an amplifier and in nature, such amplification is rarely available.

Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS made an egregious error in his claim about positive feedback in the article to which I linked by claiming positive feedback causes amplification. That is simply not true, an amplifier separate from the feedback is required. Even if his reference is to a re-defined form of positive feedback peculiar to climate science, he cannot talk about a tipping point unless he means the amplified version of PF defined in physics.

The only natural PF in nature I can think of is the kind that destroyed the Tacoma Narrow suspension bridge. Wind blowing through the suspension cables caused them to vibrate like a guitar string and due to the sustained driving force of the wind, the natural resonance in the cable structure system continued to amplify. Natural resonance is the only natural PF of which I am aware, there is none in the atmosphere.

Another example of natural resonance comes to mind. When you apply a certain sustained audio frequency to a certain kind of drinking glass, natural resonance can cause the glass to shatter.

There is no way solar energy incident on ice can be considered a feedback. Climate scientists have obviously incorrectly defined their own notions of positive feedback if they are suggestion some kind of amplification of solar energy. The driving signal is obviously solar energy and there is no way to fit a feedback signal into that energy, especially not one that creates PF. Something would have to amplify the solar energy signal.

Nothing can produce a temperature hotter than the temperature of the heat gained from solar energy. That would require an amplifier. The notion of trapping energy, or slowing it down, is nonsense. Solar energy can be stored as long as that energy is replenished each day, but losses prevent any kind of build up that would exceed the solar energy input.

If there were no losses, there would be perpetual motion. That’s the only way PF could occur in the atmosphere or to allow the catastrophic heating claimed by AGW.

DA…”GR claimed:
Nothing can produce a temperature hotter than the temperature of the heat gained from solar energy

T(photosphere)=5700 K”

Did I not say ‘heat gained’, as in reference to heat gained in the Earth’s surface from solar radiation? What does that have to do with the photosphere?

BTW…in case you’re still confused as to how solar energy heats the surface, the surface is a huge conglomeration of electrons and protons. Sub-atomic particles aside, the surface is an aggregation of protons and electrons.

According to Bohr, and feel free to contradict him, those electrons in every atom of the surface absorb solar energy, rising to a higher energy state. That translates to heat.

The surface, in turn, converts that heat back to infrared energy because it’s hard to sustain a higher energy state for the electrons. They fall back to a lower state, emitting IR in the process, and cooling.

If all atoms cannot radiate in the IR band, where does the IR come from? Next you’ll be telling me it comes from only CO2 and water vapour absorbed in the Earth’s crust.

Gordon Robertson indeed shows no ability to learn. I would agree with you on that one. However if you go to the previous thread you will see that humans can plunge yet lower.

YOU: “You are so clueless its hard to believe any human being could be so stupid.”

Check out two posters, g*e*r*a*n an J Halp-less convinced the Moon does not rotate on its axis as it orbits the Earth. Many have explained why their view is incorrect, even SkepticGoneWild presented very rational data and links to demonstrate why they were wrong. They only attacked the truth and went on in their beliefs content to believe everyone but themselves were clueless. Maybe you should avoid reading the interaction. It is very painful to see that there are some that truly cannot reason or think. Gordon seems to be one of them. They do nothing to aid a Skeptic cause and work against Roy Spencer’s view. It is complete science denial in favor of made up opinions.

DA…”Gordon Robertson says:
Explain the feedback. Where does the feedback signal come from?

From CO2s warming”.

You clearly don’t understand feedback as applied in physics. Anyone can redefine feedback to anything they want, but when they apply positive feedback to a runaway greenhouse effect, they are talking about PF as defined in physics.

A feedback signal cannot come from ‘CO2 warming’. That warming would be a theoretical effect caused by a system of which the feedback signal is a part. If you have such a system you should patent it.

You seem to be referring to the AGW sci-fi that surface radiation warms CO2 in the atmosphere and the CO2 feeds back IR that causes the surface to warm to a temperature beyond which it is heated by solar energy.

Some have suggested that IR can be added to solar energy to increase the intensity of solar energy. Physicist Stephan Rahmstorf has suggested that, an idiotic supposition. It describes perpetual motion in that you can add recycled solar energy to get an increase in the intensity.

Here’s what’s wrong with that sci-fi. Losses!!!!!!!!! Perpetual motion is not possible because every system has losses and cannot be self-sustainable. AGW not only suggests there is a cycle between the atmosphere and surface that is sustainable they are claiming it can increase the heat available.

Not only that, the molecule in the air claimed to be creating that sustainability of energy constitutes only 0.04% of the atmosphere. If you can’t see something wrong with that theory you need to recheck your understanding of physics.

DA…”Cooling via convection and (esp) conduction are minor players in the how the Earth cools especially higher in the atmosphere where the air is thinner.

This is why N2/O2 are very minor players, despite making up 99% of the atmosphere”.

That’s what climate modelers would have you believe. That theory about radiation was dispelled in 1909 when Wood, a scientist highly regarded by Neils Bohr, pointed out:

“Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere, warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions”.

Wood has introduced a scientific fact that is not generally known these days. When the atmosphere which is 99% N2/O2 warms via conduction, it cannot easily radiate the gas because air is a poor radiator. That explains the GHE perfectly.

You can see that cold air can still produce a fairly decent amount of Downwelling IR. This dry desert air has an emissivity of around 0.66 to produce this amount of radiant energy for its temperature.

Also conduction through air is very small and at night convection is no longer a major source of heat loss. Most night-time surface heat loss is from radiant energy losses.

Here is a conduction calculator. If you put air into the calculator you get a thermal conductivity of 0.025. Use 1 m^2 for your surface area. Go through 1 meter of air. Have the surface at 25 C and the air one meter above at 0 C and your heat transfer is only 0.625 Watts. Much much less than the radiant energy leaving the surface. The only reason radiant energy loss is not the dominant one is because of backradiation. If not for this radiant energy loss from the surface would be hundreds of watts. A hundred times greater than heat loss via conduction.

Of course, silly me. Wood was an expert in infrared radiation and had such eminence that Niels Bohr consulted with him while formulating his theory of atomic structure.

You are right and he is wrong???

When, if ever, are you going to get over yourself and get it that you don’t know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to science? You think you do and that is the hallmark of armchair scientists who have become adept at googling to find inappropriate answers.

I think your are on the wrong blog. This is a science blog and not a religious one. I have Faith but science is a different branch of thought, it is based upon evidence.

Your whole point here is just silly. Not reasonable or based upon any type of logic. More an emotional toss.
YOU: “You are right and he is wrong???

When, if ever, are you going to get over yourself and get it that you don’t know your butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to science? You think you do and that is the hallmark of armchair scientists who have become adept at googling to find inappropriate answers.”

I am going by empirical information. If Woods concluded that air does not emit much IR he is clearly wrong. Evidence shows he is wrong with that opinion. You are far worse off then he is. I am sure Woods would correct his opinion if given the information available today. You are so blind in your false belief that you cannot accept anything that goes against your pre-established belief system.

As I said, I will stick to empirical data over your opinion. Your declarations are really pointless and only show incredible ignorance on your part. If you only worship the words of Authority and are unwilling to examine facts and evidence, you are not any where close to a scientific mind. Your appeal to authority probably would offend these scientists. They would tell you to take a hike and you are ignorant.

Science history. The Bohr model was the accepted idea at the time (electrons orbit the nucleus similar to planetary orbits). It was drastically changed because of empirical evidence that did not support this model. Wake up! You are living in delusional land of make believe.

norman…”If Woods concluded that air does not emit much IR he is clearly wrong”.

He said:

“The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground, even under the most favourable conditions”.

He said ‘HEAT’ is stored in the atmosphere due to the low radiating power of a gas. When N2 and O2, making up 99% of the atmosphere, acquire heat from the surface, it’s hard for them to radiate away the heat. That’s all he is saying.

There is no reason why CO2, making up 0.04% of the atmosphere should have any effect on the heat stored in N2/O2. They will radiate their heat away eventually but while they retain it the atmosphere remains warmer.

That makes eminently more sense than a minor gas at 0.04% of the atmosphere causing the atmosphere to warm catastrophically.

norman…”The Bohr model was the accepted idea at the time (electrons orbit the nucleus similar to planetary orbits). It was drastically changed because of empirical evidence that did not support this model”.

The Bohr model has been changed somewhat in minor ways but not far from its initial theory. Even today, in chemistry classes you are taught the basic Bohr model with minor revisions by other scientists. Chemical bonding is based on the Bohr model theory, chemistry students are taught the energy orbital theory of electronic bonding.

Quantum theory applied in chemistry is based on the proton-electron model. What do you think organic chemistry is about? You probably think nucleii are balls joined by sticks as depicted in many diagrams. Those balls are basically protons and the sticks are electrons in orbit.

In fact, quantum theory is about electrons. When Bohr envisioned the model first he saw electrons orbiting the nucleus with an angular momentum while restricted to certain energy levels. That theory can be questioned as to its veracity but it helps visualize basic atomic structure.

Quantum theory draws on the Planck quanta as applied to electrons. Planck even admitted that had he been more aware of electron theory being developed simultaneously at the time he was developing his atomic energy quanta theory that it would have made his task a lot easier.

The electrons are regarded as having harmonic motion about the nucleus and that can be translated to Newtonian wave mechanics. However, it was not possible to apply wave mechanics directly so Schrodinger revised it to add the probability of finding electrons in a certain part of the nucleii’s space.

Pauling took that further, using his immense knowledge of atomic structure gained from xray crystallography and successfully predicted the shapes of a large number of atoms and molecules.

norman…”You can see that cold air can still produce a fairly decent amount of Downwelling IR”.

No argument. However, that cooler downdwelling IR must obey the 2nd law and the 2nd law cannot be reduced to a fictitious net energy flow.

Air that is colder than the surface cannot transfer heat to the surface. That’s especially true when the air claimed to transfer the heat is a gas that makes up about 1/1000% of the atmosphere based on 400 ppmv.

Saying stupid declarative statements like “No argument. However, that cooler downdwelling IR must obey the 2nd law and the 2nd law cannot be reduced to a fictitious net energy flow.”

You ignorantly make a claim with so support, no foundation and you suppose I will praise your ability to make up your own version of science because you don’t like or prefer real science (most likely you are not smart enough to understand it so you make up your own version that makes sense to your fairly limited and small thinking ability, you are not one of the bright posters on this blog, I consider you to be among the dullest. You can’t read and understand physics, you have to make up your own).

Here is what the REAL 2nd Law states: It is important to note that when it is stated that energy will not spontaneously flow from a cold object to a hot object, that statement is referring to net transfer of energy. Energy can transfer from the cold object to the hot object either by transfer of energetic particles or electromagnetic radiation, but the net transfer will be from the hot object to the cold object in any spontaneous process. Work is required to transfer net energy to the hot object.

It is completely clear to most posters that your brain is unable to understand actual science. I have pointed out many times you are completely daft and wrong, you are not able to change your false thought process. You just keep pretending your ideas are real and you are putting out useful information. The truth is you put out trash and garbage and are detrimental to scientific advancement and thought. It would be nice if you quit posting for a bit and did some actual reading.

norman…”It is completely clear to most posters that your brain is unable to understand actual science”.

By ‘most posters’ you mean you and your alarmist cronies. You are posting on a site where the available data points to little or no average warming since 1979 and none between 1998 and 2015. You alarmists are desperately trying to conjure up any old dirt to keep your lame AGW theory alive.

I am trying to support the data of UAH by looking at real science. My explanations do support the data and yours don’t So who lacks the understanding of actual science?

I have explained to you how electrons work, based on the theory of Neils Bohr. His theory is still taught in chemistry today at the university level. If you took a course in organic chemistry right now your be subjected to the Bohr model and in-depth electron theory.

I am not talking out of my hat, I studied this theory in electrical engineering. Electrons carry an electric field and a magnetic field related to their electrical charge. They produce an electromagnetic wave.

Go figure.

All wireless communication on this planet is based on the same theory. Electrons traveling up and down an antenna produce an electromagnetic field. In an atom, electrons traveling between energy levels produce EM.

Luminaries like you and David Appell call me a liar. I wonder if either of you understand how absolutely stupid you must seem to people with a basic understanding of physics.

norman…”Here is what the REAL 2nd Law states: It is important to note that when it is stated that energy will not spontaneously flow from a cold object to a hot object, that statement is referring to net transfer of energy”.

Give it up Norman. Clausius was talking about heat (thermal energy)when he created the 2nd law, not electromagnetic energy, or generic energy per se. I’ll give you this, in his day, Clausius and a whole lot of scientists, including Max Planck, believed that heat was radiated through space. It was not till much later that the discovery was made that heat was converted to EM, and the EM was radiated.

In the 1890s, electrons were discovered and as the theory developed it was discovered that electrons converted heat to EM. Planck admitted that had he paid attention to the developing electron theory it would have made his work much easier in the development of the statistical mechanics theory of heat.

Not once, in any of his papers on heat, did Clausius mention net energy flow. He talked only of heat TRANSFER. The 2nd law applies to heat transfer, not to EM.

Even the Stefan-Boltsmann equation does not refer to net energy flow, it addresses only the cooling of a body due to the radiation of EM between a body and it’s surrounding atmosphere or two bodies of different temperature nearby. S_B addresses a one-way flow of energy and Boltzmann was trying to corroborate the 2nd law using statistical mechanics.

Where you and others get the idea a net energy is available is a mystery.

I have already stated that, his expertise in infrared radiation. He specialized in IR photography but his expertise in infrared radiation led Niels Bohr to consult with him. I’d call that eminent when someone of the stature of Bohr consults with you.

“It is worth noting that, in the absence of convection, pure greenhouse warming would lead to a globally averaged surface temperature of 72 C given current conditions.”

He cites Syukuro Manabe / Fritz Moeller (‘ON THE RADIATIVE EQUILIBRIUM AND HEAT BALANCE OF THE ATMOSPHERE’, 1961 [!!!]) as the original source of this temperature communication; but I have this genial paper on disk, and it does not contain such info. So he probably obtained it from somewhere else.

*

Btw, let me cite Lindzen again to make clear that unlike ridiculous people venerating him, he is perfectly aware not only of the existence of GHE, but also of a downward flux reemitted back to surface by the atmosphere as a reaction to the upward flux leaving surface (see p. 293).

binny…”2. Cooling via convection and (esp) conduction are minor players in the how the Earth cools

It is hard to believe that two persons pretending to have a scientific education can write such nonsense”.

This is why I call you an idiot.

Obviously you have not read Lindzen. He claims the opposite of what you claim. Whereas he supports the theory of a GHE he does not support the popular theory that the atmosphere acts like a greenhouse or a blanket.

“When it comes to global warming due to the greenhouse effect, it is clear that many approaches are highly oversimplified. This includes the simple blanket picture of the greenhouse effect shown in Figure 1. We will approach the issue more seriously in order to see whether one can reach reasonably rigorous conclusions. It turns out that one can”.

“Contrary to the iconic statement of the latest IPCC Summary for policymakers, this is only on the order of a third of the observed trend at the surface, and suggests a warming of about 0.4 over a century. It should be added that this is a bound more than an estimate”.

Lindzen thinks warming based on a doubling of CO2 has an upper bounds of 0.4C.

You insinuate that I venerate Lindzen. I do not, I think he’s wrong by sticking to the iconic greenhouse notion that only CO2 and water vapour can warm the atmosphere.

It seems ridiculous to conclude that gases comprising 0.3% of the atmospere are responsible for all warming while gases (N2/02) comprising 99% of the atmosphere contribute nothing.

Lindzen appears to support the notion of radiation from the upper atmosphere but not from the surface. I agree with him on that but I think it is the majority gases radiating, not the rare, minority gases.